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SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Anna Chapin Ray’s Stories 


THE SIDNEY BOOKS 

I. Sidney; Her Summer on the St. Lawrence 

II. Janet; Her Winter in Quebec 

III Her Year in New York 

IV. „ ' at College 

(Others in Preparation) 


fHE TEDDY BOOKS 

I. Teddy; Her Book 

II. Phebe ; Her Profession 

III. Teddy; Her Daughter 

IV. Nathalie’s Chum 

V. Ursula’s Freshman 

VI. Nathalie’s Sister 






“ 1 DAY,’ HE SAID SLOWLY, ‘ IT’S NOT TOO LATE YET.’ ” 

[Frontispiece. Seep. 23 . 


^tDnev Boot# 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


BY 

ANNA CHAPIN RAY 

AUTHOR OF “SIDNEY: HER SUMMER ON THE ST. LAWRENCE,” “JANET: 
HER WINTER IN QUEBEC,” “DAY: HER YEAR 
IN NEW YORK,” ETO. 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY 
HARRIET ROOSEVELT RICHARDS 


BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
1908 


UBffARY of CGNCKE6! 

I wo Copies rtec*i»e« 

SEP 11 WM 

v<*vy< *•« 

sA.n. nos. 

GiaA* (X. Me. nu , 

^UA.' i 


Copyright , 1908, 

By Little, Brown, and Company. 

u4ii rights reserved 


Published, September, 1908. 


»* • 



COLONIAL PRESS 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
Boston , U.S.A. 


%0- 1 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

“‘Day,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s not too late 

yet ’ ” . . . . . . . Frontispiece ' 

“ Later, his contentment deepened, as he sat 

IN HIS CORNER ” 76 

“Irene had the tact to rise, without another 

word 148 

“Down the path they came charging along” 275 

















. 














































































* 












































































V. 






























































SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


CHAPTER ONE 

** One lovely summer morning, 

Without a word of warning, 

There ’peared a bear 
Without a hair, 

One lovely summer morning.” 

I TS pitch rising and falling according to the general 
outlines of an ancient Gregorian tone, the voice 
came up the stairs and halted outside of Sidney's 
open door. Then, — 

“ Did you hear that, Sidney? ” it demanded, with 
an accent which had suddenly shifted into harmony 
with the energetic, strenuous modern century. 

“ Yes, Bungay." 

Sidney, her lap full of rolled-up stockings destined 
to fill in the irregularities in the substratum of her 
trunk, was pondering whether her bathrobe should 
go in next, or wait to be put on top. Accordingly, 
her voice was distracted, preoccupied. 

“ What did you think about it? ” Bungay asked 
vaingloriously. 

“Beautiful!” Sidney's voice was still absent, 
while she shifted her best pumps to another corner. 
Bungay strolled into the room and seated himself 
l 


2 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


in the open trunk-tray amid a pile of fresh shirt- 
waists. 

“ You don’t pay any ’tention,” he rebuked his 
sister. “ I think it’s very beautiful; but you only 
just say so, without thinking anything at all.” 

“ What is it, Bungay? Oh, you dear boy, do get 
out of that tray!” And Sidney supplemented her 
words by a firm grasp on Bungay’s shoulders. 

Bungay freed himself from the grasp and smiled 
up at Sidney, quite unabashed. 

“ My poem. I made it for you.” 

Sidney, restoring order in the tray, forced herself 
to an appearance of excited pleasure amounting 
wellnigh to delirium. 

“ You made it, Bungay? Really and truly? How 
proud of you lam!” And yet, asked, she still would 
have been totally at a loss to say whether Bungay’s 
manufacture were a kite or a toy locomotive. 

Fortunately, however, Bungay did not ask. 

“ Yes, I made it for you. I thought maybe it 
would keep you from getting homesick, when you 
went to college.” 

The heart of Sidney, preparing for her first great 
exit from the home circle, was unwontedly tender. 
She looked up from her packing. 

“ You dear little boy!” she said. “ Thank you, 
Bungay. I’ll love it.” 

“ Then you say it over,” Bungay ordered her 
imperiously. 

Sidney shook her head. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


3 


“ I like better to hear you say it,” she suggested 
craftily. “ You know just how to make it sound 
best.” 

Young as he was, Bungay had all the character- 
istics of the true poet. Upon one salient one Sidney 
had hit with unerring aim. 

“ All right. Listen.” And once more he intoned 
his masterpiece. 

This time, Sidney clapped her hands. 

“ Bravo, Bungay! And you really made it up? ” 

“ No; I made it down,” Bungay replied literally, 
as once more he seated himself, this time on the pile 
of tissue papers which concealed Sidney's best hat. 
“ I began at the top line and worked down the page, 
and I couldn't work up again, because it was too 
short to reach over the leaf. And I think it's very 
good indeed, and ought to keep you from getting 
homesick a bit.” 

11 Why shouldn't I get homesick, Bungay boy? ” 
Sidney was once more deep in her trunk and spoke 
without lifting her eyes. 

“ Because it ought to. make you think about me.” 
Bungay’s tone was sentimental, as he lifted his 
stout little legs and let his fat little body settle more 
deeply into its easy nest. 

The soft crumpling of the papers aroused Sidney 
to attention, and she laid firm hands on Bungay's 
nether extremities. Then, of a sudden, she turned 
strategic. 

“ I believe it would make me think about you 


4 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


lots more, if you would only write it down for me, 
Bungay / 7 she suggested. “ Then I could pin it 
on my wall where I could see it, every single day, 
and not forget it ever.” 

Bungay scrambled to his feet, albeit with a rotary 
motion which bade fair to complete the ruin he had 
wrought. 

“ All right. Where’s a pencil? ” 

“ Mine are packed. I think one of the twins left 
hers on the table down-stairs.” 

Bungay dashed away, descended the stairs by his 
customary route of the banisters, and landed on 
the rug with a bump. Then he lifted up his voice, — 

“ On the wall of your room at Smith College, 
Sidney? ” he queried, and the volume of his tone 
implied that he believed his sister to be already 
ensconced within those distant halls of learning. 

For four years, Sidney Stay re, at present eighteen 
and as downright as a girl could be, had been working 
steadily towards the packing of the great new trunk 
which stood open before her now. The trunk meant 
a good deal in her life. Heretofore, she had lived 
upon her mother’s trunk. Now she possessed one 
of her own, a large and shiny one with a great red S 
in a black diamond upon either end. To Sidney, 
this journey was not like any other one she had made. 
Those were visits, her return was bound to occur 
within a more or less short time. This was no visit, 
but something of far deeper import; her real return 
would not be until four years had passed away, 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 5 


perhaps not even then. And whereas, heretofore, 
the trunk had been full of frocks and hats, now it 
held something more, something quite as real, albeit 
quite intangible. For into that open trunk and 
among her gowns, Sidney Stayre was placing many 
a girlish dream and plan and purpose, many an 
aspiration which the coming years alone could ever 
make good. In a certain sense, the closing of her 
emptied bureau drawers had marked the shutting 
away of her young girlhood. It would be a budding 
woman who would open them again to take possession 
of them, when those four years were ended. And 
would the budding woman be swift to recognize 
the girlhood buried there, to love it, and to claim 
kinship with it? There lay the question. 

As a matter of course, Sidney, folding her old 
brown pongee frock, did not express her thoughts 
in any such form as this. They were vague thoughts, 
yet they held within them all the questions sure to 
rise up in the mind of a girl whose new life is bound 
to break sharply away from the old, old groove. 
It mattered not in the least that all the past four 
years had tended to that very hour. The hour was 
no less momentous, for all that. Sidney, as she laid the 
pongee frock above the bathrobe and then attacked 
the problem of her best white gown, wondered if 
Day were sharing in her mood, Day and Janet. 

For Sidney was not to take the momentous step 
alone. Less than half a mile away, in a home far 
more elaborate than the Stayre’s cosy house, Sidney’s 


6 SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


chiefest friend, Day Argyle, was just then confronted I 
with a yawning trio of trunks and a bed heaped with | 
a wardrobe which, two days before, had taken away 
Sidney’s breath completely. She had long been 
accustomed to Day’s pretty clothes. Still, it was one 
thing to get used to them, a frock at a time, and 
quite another matter to be confronted by a round 
dozen of new frocks, with hats and shoes to match, 
and coats of every persuasion from golf jackets to 
fluffy, floppy things to wear to parties. Judged by 
the Argyle fortune, Day’s clothes were quite conserva- 
tive; judged by Sidney’s simple outfit, they were an 
astounding vision. The Stayres would have all they 
could do to send Sidney to a college such as Smith. 
At best, her gowns must be of the simplest. More- 
over, Mrs. Stayre had been shrewd enough to recog- 
nize the fact that, for Sidney, going there a stranger, 
all her gowns would be like new, so far as familiarity 
with them was concerned. Better wait, then, until 
the second year, and then equip her more elaborately. 
And Sidney had listened, and agreed, and fallen to 
work, under her mother’s practical advice, to mend 
and freshen and remodel the gowns she had already 
worn. Nevertheless, Sidney was a human girl; she 
liked pretty clothes, would have liked a dozen trunk- 
fuls of her own. Denied that, however, she was broad 
enough to revel in her private view of Day’s new 
finery, revel in it without a twinge of girlish envy. 
Day’s clothes, after all, were a mere detail. It was 
much to be Day Argyle’s chosen friend. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 7 


As for Janet, she was Janet Leslie, and a dear. 
Likewise, she was a Canadian, a Canadian who had 
had the independence to cut free from her own local 
ties and to choose an American college because she 
could get there some things denied to her at home. 
For the rest, there had been a time, the time when 
Sidney had known her best, when Janet could have' 
had nearly as many clothes as Day herself. Now, for 
the past two years, Janet had owned just two cloth 
frocks, her best one and her “other.” Moreover, 
the “other” had had a darn in its front breadth. 
But Day, fussy and finical as a girl could be, had 
made the acquaintance of Janet under these new 
conditions, and had loudly proclaimed to Sidney 
her belief that, with a girl like Janet, it didn’t make 
the least bit of difference, a judgment which had 
received the vigorous support of Day’s older brother. 

And now Janet, with her two frocks and, perhaps, 
an extra one, was already on the spot, awaiting with 
what patience she was able the coming of her two 
good friends. It was three weeks, now, since Janet 
had packed her little trunk and Janet’s mother her 
large one, and had journeyed southward to the 
lovely old New England town where Mrs. Leslie’s 
new work was awaiting her, untried, full of responsi- 
bility, yet full of brilliant promise. 

For Mrs. Leslie, left a widow on an income less 
than, heretofore, she had been accustomed to pay 
her cook, had lost no time in opening her fine old 
house to boarders. Those boarders had chanced 


8 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


to be the Argyles, four of them. It was through 
Day Argyle and her brother Rob that Janet’s young 
ambition had been turned to college; it was through 
a random remark of Mrs. Argyle that Janet had been 
fired with the idea of using her dainty, convent- 
taught handiwork as source of the fast-growing 
fund which was to make that college life a possibility. 
Later on, as the time drew near, as Janet’s plans 
grew and gathered focus, it was through Mr. Argyle’s 
financial backing that Mrs. Leslie had been enabled 
to hire the huge old house upon a central street, 
to throw out a huger wing and to equip it for the use 
of the girls who were destined to fill it. Last of all, 
the Argyles, husband and wife, had appeared upon 
the scene, had held long conference with the Presi- 
dent, with the Registrar; then, rushing northward 
in the private car Aurora , they had lost no time in 
bringing Mrs. Leslie down to assume her share in 
the second conference. 

It had been Mrs. Argyle who had suggested that 
final move, and Mrs. Argyle had been wise. One look 
at Mrs. Leslie, slight and dainty as a girl with her 
wide, sweet blue eyes and her waving dark brown 
hair, one half-hour spent in listening to her sweet- 
voiced phrasings of soundest common sense, of 
watching the grace and breeding of her every look 
and motion, all these details had won the day. The 
first of September found her refusing daily demands 
for more rooms, while she set in order her plans 
for housing the twenty girls or so whose recommenda- 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 9 


tions had passed the critical sifting process arranged 
by Mrs. Argyle. 

Of course, in all this there was a certain element 
of risk, a risk none knew so well as Mrs. Leslie. 
Her social guardianship of the girls would be all that 
the strictest parent could require. The fact remained, 
however, that she would be English, they American. 
There would be two races, two distinct points of 
view. Things might be right; they also might be 
very wrong. 

“ But there is no especial use in worrying about it, 
mummy/' Janet said philosophically, on the eve of 
the first arrivals. “ We can't do worse than fight; 
and, in that case, we can just pack up our trunks and 
start for home. I don't believe they will be so very 
bad, even if they are Americans." 

“ Not bad, dearie; only different," Mrs. Leslie 
corrected her, with a smile. 

But Janet shook her head. 

“ Not so different, either. Sidney wasn't, nor Day; 
and you know Freda," Janet only quoted her elder 
sister under extreme stress of circumstances ; “ Freda 
likes Americans as well as she does us." 

Mrs. Leslie smiled down at her daughter’s eager 
young face. Janet Leslie was not pretty — yet. 
She was thin and dark and intensely alive; but her 
oval, olive face and slim figure held promise of great 
beauty in the years to come. Mrs. Leslie was slim, too; 
but there the likeness ended. She was lighter than 
Janet; her slimness was less wiry, more swaying, and 


10 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


the effect of this was increased by the long, clinging 
gowns she invariably wore inside the house, by the 
arrangement of her soft brown hair which was 
artistic and like nothing else that Janet had ever seen. 
And Janet, wiry and trig and tight-girt for whatever 
might arise, adored her mother’s trailing skirts and 
her soft, curling ends of hair. To Janet, her mother 
was a thing of ceaseless charm. Nevertheless, she 
shook her head ever so little at her mother’s next 
words, — 

“ At least, we shall know all about it, by to- 
morrow night.” 

“ That depends,” Janet made dubious reply. “ Let 
me see: four come, to-morrow. Is it the Denver tribe, 
or the Chicago ones? ” 

“ Both.” 

“ All eight? ” Janet’s tone expressed her conster- 
nation. “ When did you hear? ” 

“ This morning.” 

“ Horrible! Still, it is as well to get it over,” 
Janet sighed. “ I hate new people; and I only wish 
Sidney and Day could be the first ones.” 

“ They will be here, the day after. It won’t be 

long to wait.” Then, as Mrs. Leslie studied her 

daughter’s downcast face, she smiled a little to 

herself. “ Janet,” she said; “ shall I spoil a 

surprise by giving you something good to antici- 
pate? ” 

“ I wish you would.” Janet looked up; but her 
face did not lighten. “ What is it? ” she asked 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


11 


after a moment, with a listlessness which showed 
her incredulity as regarded the goodness of the 
news. 

Mrs. Leslie sat down on the arm of her daughter’s 
chair, and drew the smooth, dark head against her 
shoulder. 

“ Courage, little daughter! ” she said. “ This 
isn’t the time to have the dumps. It is too late for 
that; and, besides, Ronald wouldn’t like his sister 
to lose her pluck. It all will come out right, dearie; 
it can’t help it, with friends like the Argyles back of 
us. And, if it doesn’t, what difference? ” 

Janet lifted her head with a jerk. 

“ This difference, you darling mummy. Don’t 
you suppose I know that, just for me, you’ve given 
up home, and the people you like, and have come 
among strangers and into all sorts of hard work, just 
so that I can get to know things? And suppose I 
don’t? Suppose I fail, or get lazy, or prove to be a 
dunce; then where will you be, I’d like to know? 
Answer me that, and then see if you wonder I’m in the 
dumps! I feel as if it all came back on me, as if 
I’d pulled you up by the roots, away from all the 
things and places and people you love best, and as 
if I never, never, never could make up to you for it, 
whatever I try to do.” And, stretching out her thin 
arms as if to snatch at what lay beyond her sight she 
gave a little, nervous laugh, then shut her arms 
around the mother neck and buried her face against 
the mother shoulder. 


12 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ But I don’t worry, dear,” Mrs. Leslie answered 
softly. 

“ No; but I do,” Janet made breathless reply. 
Then she cast her emotion from her as suddenly as 
it had come. “ What is your great news? ” she 
demanded, once more sitting up to face her mother. 

Mrs. Leslie’s smile responded to her daughter’s 
altered mood. 

“ Merely this: that Rob is coming up with the 
girls to see them settled. He will be here till Harvard 
opens, next week.” 

Janet drew in her breath abruptly, a breath of 
sheerest rapture. 

u Mummy!” she exclaimed. “ Mummy Leslie! 
Now I don’t care about anything else.” 

And when, an hour later, she fell asleep, her lips, 
still curving with her happiness, bore witness to her 
full content. 


Sidney at college 


13 


CHAPTER TWO 

“ | VERY girls’ college is like every other girls’ 
college, saving and excepting Smith. That 
is unique, and wholly adorable.” 

Thus harangued Day, seated, meanwhile, upon a 
closed trunk. Opposite her, upon a second trunk, sat 
her brother Rob. Beyond them both and upon a 
third and mammoth trunk sat Rob’s chosen friend 
and chum, Jack Blanchard. The closed trunks, 
however, marked an interval, not a finish, of the 
packing. 

“ How do you know? ” Rob queried flippantly. 
“ You haven’t sampled it yet.” 

“ Wasn’t I there for a whole day, this summer? ” 
Day demanded. 

“ You can’t tell the flavour of your oyster by look- 
ing at his empty shell,” Rob suggested. 

Day’s retort came with refreshing promptness. 

“ No; fortunately for you,” she responded. 

But Jack struck in, deliberately, as was his wont. 

“ But, Day, it’s going to be lonesome,” he objected. 
“ Can’t you and Rob call the contract off and stop 
at home? ” 

Day laughed, slid off her trunk and went to perch 
herself on the corner of the one already occupied by 
Jack. 


14 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Too late. You should have found it out before. 
The car is ordered for to-morrow noon. How I wish 
you were going up, too, Jackie! ” 

“ I'll come later,” he assured her. 

“ Of course. I count on it. You’re not going to 
do all the missing.” 

Then there came a little silence, while the bright 
faces grew suddenly grave. As Day said, Jack would 
not do all the missing. Both she and Rob would be 
acutely conscious of the loss of this friend who had 
grown to fill a brother’s place in the home where 
chance had brought him. A Pullman conductor, 
whose sturdy, helpful friendliness had won Rob’s 
regard, one stormy winter night, Jack Blanchard had 
been transplanted from his old routine into the 
Argyle office, then, into the Argyle home. In both 
places, he had more than made good the promise 
of his clean brown eyes. The transplanting had 
occurred but nine months before; already the Argyle 
home would have felt itself incomplete without Jack 
Blanchard. 

To the outward eye, the two young fellows were 
totally unlike. Rob was an almost aggressively 
handsome blond of eighteen, sturdy and full of 
boyish fun, full, too, of a demonstrative affection 
for his friends which was as unboylike as it was free 
from any taint of girlishness. If one stopped to 
consider the items of his good looks, they summed 
themselves up in thick yellow hair and long yellow 
lashes, two dark blue eyes, usually merry, yet now 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


15 


and then strangely gentle, straight yellow brows, a 
straight nose and the j oiliest, most refined mouth 
boy ever had. Added to that were a pair of broad 
shoulders and a little limp — impediment in his 
walk, Rob called it — left over from a football strain 
of three or four years before. 

Like Janet Leslie, to whom, however, he was a total 
stranger, Jack Blanchard was an Anglo-Canadian, 
and well-born. Like Janet, too, his life had known 
reverses; but, unlike Janet, he had come through 
his bad times and was fast returning to the edge 
of his old prosperity. For the rest, military service 
had given him the erectness, bodily and mental, of 
the true British soldier. His shoulders were wide, 
his mouth thin and firm, his brown eyes keen and 
clean and steady. Otherwise, there was little to 
distinguish him from his fellows, save an ugly scar 
across his temple, left there by a burn, now five 
months old. Strange to say, Jack’s friends felt no 
wish to bewail the scar, partly because it was so 
much less than they all had feared, partly because it 
served to remind them that, face to face with a bad 
emergency, Jack Blanchard had proved himself 
swift to think, brave to act. To Rob and Day, that 
ugly scar was a veritable badge of honour. For the 
rest, Jack was not handsome in the least; but so 
likable and steady that no one ever questioned his 
lack of beauty. Older than Rob, a true Briton and 
hence far less exuberant, far less quick, he atoned 
for his mental deliberation by his good staying power, 


16 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


by a reliability which won him first regard, then 
love. 

And Day, sitting there beside him, was fully con- 
scious that her one brother, Rob, was perfect and 
all-sufficient. Nevertheless, had Fate seen fit to 
endow her with a second brother, she would have 
been quick to choose Jack Blanchard for that place. 
Now, however, as she sat looking steadily up at him, 
her brave brown eyes were a little overcast. 

“ It is too bad to break up our trio and go our 
ways,” she said slowly. “ We’ve had such good 
times together, and nobody knows when we’ll be 
here like this again.” 

“ Thanksgiving,” Rob suggested practically, moved 
by a desire to drive away her sudden gravity. 

But Day shook her head. 

“ Not in the same way. Things will come in be- 
tween; we’ll have to explain our stories, when we 
tell them.” 

“ Sometimes we do now,” Rob made unkindly 
comment. 

This time, Day laughed. With the laugh, she cast 
aside her moment of depression. 

“ No matter,” she said. “ It will be all right, for 
we all shall have our own things to talk about. Jack’s 
will be most interesting. You and I, Rob, will 
have to make up in learning what we lack in 
events.” 

“ What do you suppose Sidney is doing now? ” 
Rob queried idly. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


17 


Day made an expressive gesture towards her 
trunks. 

“ The same thing that every other freshman is 
doing, to-night. Packing.” 

“ Janet, for instance? If so, she’d better hurry up 
and get it done.” 

“ Janet! She’s there and in the midst of it all, by 
now. She wrote me that three or four girls would 
get there, to-night.” 

“ Jack,” Rob spoke thoughtfully; “ I want you to 
know that little countrywoman of yours. She is 
made of the right sort of stuff.” 

Jack laughed. 

“ We all are. I thought you’d learned that, long 
ago. What became of the brother? I remember 
him, the night he met you at the pier. Wonderfully 
handsome chap, the sort that, by good rights, ought 
to die young.” 

“ He hasn’t, or hadn’t at last accounts.” Rob 
turned sideways on the trunk and stretched out his 
legs at ease. “ Didn’t you know the fate that fell 
on Leslie? ” 

“ No.” 

“ How funny!” Day put in. “ I supposed you 
knew all about all our friends.” 

“ Mostly, yes. But you haven’t said so much 
about the Leslies till this summer. Even then, it 
has been a case of Janet and her mother. By Jove, 
how your father has fairy-godmothered those two 
people!” And Jack fell silent for a moment. “I 


18 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


suspect it is a way he has,” he resumed. “ He gen- 
erally does think of things. But honestly, Day, 
it is only by the merest chance that I remembered 
there was a Leslie man. Where is he? ” 

“ Jack,” Rob queried gravely; “ do you remember 
Sir George Porteous? ” 

“ Rather! ” 

The next instant, both boys burst into a roar of 
laughter, for it was over the eccentricities of that 
same Sir George Porteous that their eyes had first 
met, steady brown and jolly blue, in one look of 
mutual mirth and understanding. 

“ You sha’n’t laugh,” Day protested. “ He was 
a good little dunce, and I liked him. But, all at once, 
he proved to be heir to more things than he knew how 
to manage, and he took Ronald Leslie home with 
him to be his secretary.” 

“ Poor Leslie! That was hard lines,” Jack offered 
comment. 

But Rob demurred. 

“ Pm not so sure of that. It meant much money 
and a good deal of fun. As for the work, it would be 
easier because Sir George hasn’t brains enough to 
complicate things, and Ronald will have a compara- 
tively free hand, once he learns his routine. And 
Sir George isn’t bad, as Day says.” 

“ No,” Jack offered comment again; “ he is 
merely totally preposterous.” 

Day rose. 

“ Oh, dearie me and you!” she said, and again 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


19 


there came the falling cadence in her gay young voice. 
“Fd love to stay and gossip; but it is growing very 
late, and to-morrow — ” 

Jack rose and, standing beside her, took her hand 
into his two strong, brown ones. 

“ Is to-morrow,” he said gravely. “ We all of us 
dread it, Day; but there will be gladder ones after- 
wards. Good night to you, and good dreams!” 
But his face was sober, as he watched the girl vanish 
into the next room, and, though afterwards he sat 
long in the library down-stairs, talking with Rob, 
the soberness did not entirely wear away. 

No trace of soberness was in his face, next noon, 
however, when, with one white box under his arm and 
another in his hand, he went striding out the long 
Grand Central Station and swung himself up to the 
rear end of the car Aurora. Day, who had supposed 
their farewells had all been said in the dining-room 
at home, fell upon him with effusion. 

“ Jack, you dear! Where did you come from? ” 
“ The office. Your father just telephoned me about 
his being kept in town, and he asked me to go up with 
you, to see about having the car sent back.” Jack 
delivered himself of the practical detail in all humility; 
but his eyes gave the lie to his prosaic words. “ I 
had ordered a farewell posy for each of you 
girls,” he added; “ but, as long as I was coming, I 
thought I would make the presentation speeches, 
myself.” 

Day, surrounded by her own clan and freed from 


20 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


the need of saying last farewells, pounced upon her 
box and drew out the American beauties with a de- 
light which needed no words to make itself known. 
But Sidney, begirt as she was with other and hugging, 
chattering Stayres, yet in the midst of all the tumult, 
felt a quick throbbing of her girlish heart, a quick 
burning of her eyes, as she buried her face in the great 
mat of pansies that peeped up at her from her own 
opened box. 

“ Thoughts, you know,” Jack reminded her. 

And she nodded across at him, although without 
speaking. 

The whole flight of Stayres was at the train, waiting 
to see Sidney off in all the unwonted glory of a private 
car. There were six of them, and they ranged from 
lanky, fifteen-year-old Phyllis down to Bungay, 
the poet, age six. With them was Mr. Stayre, tem- 
porarily lured from his sub-editorial desk, and trying 
his best to conceal his pride in his tall daughter be- 
neath a veil of admonition concerning her academic 
behaviour. Mrs. Stayre was there, too, as proud 
as her husband, but making far less effort to conceal 
her pride, and, proudest of all, yet almost the least 
cheerful, was Sidney’s grown-up cousin, Wade Win- 
throp, who made no secret of his open lamentation 
over her departure. These were gathered on the 
platform below the steps; in the car, Mrs. Argyle sat 
and beamed out through the window, while Jack and 
Rob stood on the steps with the girls, adding their 
chaff to the merry nonsense and disconsolate, un- 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


21 


breakable pauses which are the invariable alterna- 
tions at such a time as this. 

And then came a whistle, a final shout from the 
conductor, a sudden stepping backward on the part 
of the red-capped porters and of the group of Stayres. 
The train trembled, quivered in all its snaky length, 
and then, out from the group of faces, sorrowful, yet 
smiling bravely, the car Aurora went sliding up the 
track, carrying Sidney Stayre and Day Argyle towards 
the new life awaiting them. 

There was a breathless, wordless instant. Then, 
out of the heart of the hush, Bungay lifted up his 
voice, lifted it until the arching girders overhead 
quaked with the sound, — 

“ There Speared a bear 
Without a hair. 

Berember that, Sidney, and then you won’t get 
homesick.” 

“ But it isn’t exactly a case for homesickness,” 
Day said, the next day, as she and Rob turned from 
their final glimpse of the south-bound Aurora and 
started to walk back up town once more. “ There is 
too much to do, too many things to get used to, all 
at once. It seemed as if I couldn’t have that car 
go away; and yet — I didn’t want to go back in it. 
Do you think I’m very horrid, Rob? ” 

“ Very,” Rob assured her. “ It is a shame they 
couldn’t stay a little longer.” 

Day shook her head. 


22 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ No; not now,” she said. “ It was better that 
they went. As long as they were here, I couldn’t 
settle down; and that’s what I was sent here for, to 
settle down and get the very best of it.” • 

“ Hm! ” Rob made thoughtful comment. “ Does 
that same line of reasoning apply to my departure? 
If so, I’d best get out, to-night.” 

Regardless of a group of upper-class girls who 
swung past them, suitcase in hand, Day turned and 
clutched Rob’s arm. 

“ Rob, I shall die, when you go! ” she exclaimed 
vehemently. 

Startled, Rob stared down at his sister, heedless 
of the covert glances of approval cast upon him by the 
passing group. 

“ Day! What’s the matter? Don’t you like it? ” 

Day’s answering laugh was a bit hysterical. 

a Yes, I adore it, — now. When you go — I’m 
not so sure.” 

“ Let’s come and take a walk, Day. Never mind 
Sidney; she’ll have her chance later; and this is 
my turn,” he said as, facing about, he led the way 
under the low bridge of tracks and along the wide 
street beyond, a street elm-arched and bordered 
with the houses of old colonial days. When they were 
entirely away from the little crowd that clustered 
near the station, “Day, is it going to be lonely for 
you here? ” he asked. 

She shook her head. 

“ Not in time. Not when I get used to it. I don’t 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


23 


mind any of it but you, Rob. I have been trying 
to get used to the idea of that, and I thought I had; 
but I haven’t. Ever since we were in Quebec, we’ve 
been together, all the time, done things together, 
thought things together, and — ” she laughed a little 
forlornly; “ and half the pair of tongs finds it hard 
to get a grip on things, all by herself.” 

“ I know, Day; I hate it, myself. But there will 
be Sundays and holidays, and it’s not so far across 
to Boston,” he suggested cheerily. 

“ Miles and miles and miles,” she answered. “ I 
am trying not to be a baby, Rob; but now and then 
it comes over me like a great wave, and it makes me 
sick in here.” She laid her hand on her throat. 
“ Then I try to forget, and I pretend that you are 
here to stay.” 

They had passed under all the elms by now, and 
were standing at the edge of the broad meadows, 
guarded at the south by the twin ranges of low 
mountain. With his back to the mountains, however, 
and his blue eyes fixed on the little town nestled 
among the eastern hills, Rob made his supreme 
offer of renunciation. 

“ Day,” he said slowly; “ it’s not too late yet, and 
Dad would let me change, I know. If you’d really 
rather, I can give up Harvard and go over there.” 

Turning, Day stared up into his earnest face with 
eyes which slowly lost their melancholy and grew 
bright 'with fun. Then, for the bank above them 
sheltered them from prying eyes, Day snuggled her 


24 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


face against her brother’s shoulder and went off into 
a fit of laughter all the more intense because it came 
so close upon the tears. 

“ Oh, Rob, you darling! ” she gasped. “ How you 
must love me, to be willing even to suggest such an 
awful thing! I’d rather have you in Harvard, a 
thousand times over, than to have you over there, 
even if I could see you, every single day. Imagine 
you — ! ” Her laugh broke off her speech. Then, 
when the laugh had ended, “ Come,” she said; u we 
really and truly must go back to Sidney.” 

Sidney, meanwhile, left to herself, was philosoph- 
ically amusing herself by trying to decide certain 
momentous questions regarding bureau drawers, 
and whether it would be more disastrous to hang 
her best frocks in the congested regions at the back 
of the closet, or to crowd past them in the daily 
search for things beyond. To her entered Janet, 
after the second knock made needful by Sidney’s 
deep absorption in her problems. 

“ Where is Day? ” Janet queried, as she cast her- 
self down upon the window seat which as yet was 
guiltless of the upholsterer’s art. 

“ Seeing her mother off.” 

“ Still? ” Janet raised her brows. “ I thought 
they went at three-forty, and it’s five now.” 

“ Five? ” Sidney cast a startled glance down at 
her gown, crushed by the strenuous labours of the 
day. “ And look at me ! What time is dinner? ” 

“ Six. Mother sent me up to tell Day to have Rob 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


25 


stay here. The dining-room isn’t full yet, and she 
wants him while she can have him. Isn’t he fine? 
So big and straight, and he seems so well, too.” 

“ He has been well, ever since last Christmas. He 
had a fall then that laid him up for a few weeks. 
Do you know,” as she spoke, Sidney was unfastening 
her blouse with nimble, dusty fingers; “ I can’t 
realize at all that you knew him before I did.” 

Janet laughed, bringing into view a dimple beside 
her cheek. 

“ But I did. Rob was our friend, before he was 
yours, and we claim him.” 

“ Who is that you’re claiming? Rob? ” Day’s 
voice demanded from the threshold. “ Well, you 
just can’t have him, Janet, for he’s mine, all mine.” 

Janet laughed again. 

“ How many do you want, Day? I heard you 
laying the same wholesale claim to Mr. Blanchard, 
only last night.” 

Day crossed the floor, drew the hatpins from her 
hat and laid the hat down on the table. Then she 
faced about. 

“ Who has a better right? ” she asked coolly. 
Then she flung down the gauntlet. “ I don’t know 
about Jack Blanchard,” she remarked; “ but I do 
know this: as far as Rob Argyle is concerned, if 
either one of you can get in ahead of me, you’re wel- 
come.” Then, her say said and her defiance cast at 
Fate, she proceeded to array herself for dinner. 


26 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


CHAPTER THREE 

“ T HAVE seen the prettiest girl I ever saw in 

J- all my life!” With a bang, Sidney cast her 
books down on the window seat, and cast herself 
down beside them. 

Janet, coiled up by the other window and wielding 
the dictionary for the joint translation being made 
by herself and Day, looked up with a patient boredom 
so obvious as to be slightly overdone. 

“ How many does that make, Sidney? ” she 
scoffed. 

Sidney's answer was crushing in its brevity. 

“ I'm not Day,” she said. 

“ Fortunately,” that young woman interposed. 
“ The college couldn't hold a pair of us. What were 
you saying, Sidney? ” 

“ That I have seen the prettiest girl in college.” 

“ Doubted,” Day said serenely. “ However, go 
on. Who is she? ” 

“ How should I know? ” 

“ Where is she? ” 

“ Sitting on the gym floor, or at least, she was, 
watching us play basket ball.” 

“ Oh,” Janet made dry comment. “ So that was 
it? And she applauded? ” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


27 


“ More than that. She spoke to me,” Sidney an- 
nounced. 

“ Thrilling! What did the goddess say?” 

“ She is a goddess, anyway,” Sidney said loyally. 

Day interposed. 

“ Oh, don't! That's local slang, and I have always 
said and vowed, and Rob has, too, that we wouldn't 
be the sort of freshmen that accumulated a vocabu- 
lary, inside of a week.” 

“ It's ten days since we came, and goddess is Vir- 
gilian,” Sidney corrected literally. 

But Janet offered cross correction, as became one 
whose Virgil cram was an affair of only the preceding 
summer. 

“ Virgil's goddess appeared by her gait; this one 
was sitting on the floor. Fancy Venus watching 
basket ball, with her feet tucked under her! But 
what did the goddess say, Sidney? ” 

Sidney laughed. 

“ I feel rather coy about repeating it; it was so 
very personal,” she confessed. 

Day looked up from her book. 

“ Go on and tell us, Sidney,” she urged. 

Sidney yielded to the urging. 

“ As nearly as I can quote her words, she said, 
1 For goodness' sake, child, won't you ever learn to 
keep inside those lines ! ' Of course, the words weren't 
the main thing, though.” 

“ If I had been a freshman in your place,” Day 
remarked sententiously; “ I should have rather felt 


28 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


they were. However, I’m not a budding athlete, 
and I don’t know the lingo. For all I can say, those 
might have been terms of the highest praise.” 

Sidney rumpled her hair, already loosened by two 
hours’ hard play; then she clasped her hands at the 
back of her head. 

“ High enough for me,” she said contentedly. 
“ I was the only girl of the class she spoke to, and 
that was something. Then, when I was coming out 
across the back campus, I met her again, and she 
bowed to me as sweetly as could be.” 

“ Some sophomore, most likely.” 

“ No; a junior at the very least, and such a pretty 
one.” 

“ What was she like? ” Janet queried. “ Day 
loves details, and it may keep her from mourning 
Rob’s untimely departure.” 

Day allowed her book to slide to the floor, and 
glanced at her watch. 

“ Never! ” she said firmly. “ I shall mourn till the 
end of time. You haven’t a brother — ” 

“ Three! ” 

“ I should like to know why not! ” 

The duet was full of protest, albeit brief. Quite 
unmoved, Day went on, — 

“ Like mine, I was about to say. I shall never 
smile without him. Still, the poor dear must be in 
Boston by now, and it is time I began to rally and 
take a little notice. What was she like, Sid- 
ney? ” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


29 


“ Pretty, I said,” Sidney made vague reply; “and 
she wore blue linen clothes and brown shoes.” 

Day rose, with a little groan of ill-suppressed 
impatience. 

“ Isn’t that exactly Sidney? ” she protested. 
“ Only last winter, I asked her about some notable 
or other her father had brought home to dinner, 
an English novelist; and all I could get out of her 
was ‘ She has a funny nose.’ Sidney, I’d advise 
you to forsake basket ball and take to descriptive 
writing. There’s more chance for improvement 
there.” 

“ Possibly,” Sidney made serene response. “ Still, I 
mustn’t be selfish in my aims, and think only of my 
own improvement. All in its own good time. Mean- 
while, I am thinking of the best good of the freshman 
team.” 

Two days later, they were once more gathered in 
the great front room which already had been estab- 
lished as the favourite meeting-ground of the trio. 
In reality, the room belonged to Day and Sidney; 
but Janet, who nominally inhabited her mother’s 
room in the exact centre of the house, actually spent 
the largest part of her time in the side-window seat 
where she could study or talk with the others as she 
chose and as the conversation waxed interesting or 
lapsed into dullness. 

It was Day who had arranged this constant re- 
treat for Janet. Her room was huge, the great 
“ front chamber ” of an old colonial house. It was 


30 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


also quiet in comparison with the sanctum of Mrs. 
Leslie, which the girls were wont to invade ruth- 
lessly and at all hours in search of the sympathy, 
advice, consolation, congratulation, or even admoni- 
tion which the past week had taught them to expect. 
It was charming for the girls; it must be more or less 
satisfactory to Mrs. Leslie of whose forebodings 
Day, by way of her mother, had gained more than 
an inkling. Nevertheless, it could not fail to be more 
or less distracting, even to a girl with the concentra- 
tion of Janet Leslie. Moreover, Day, who had certain 
perceptions beyond her years and who had been 
promptly lifted to an influential position by common 
consent of the other girls in the house, was swift 
to see that among those girls it would be fatal to the 
influence of Mrs. Leslie and to the popularity of 
Janet to have Janet, always and perforce, on hand 
at all these little visits to her mother’s room. At 
best, it would be a disadvantage to Janet to be 
the daughter of the house. She would need to walk 
most circumspectly in all her ways. Moreover and ac- 
cording to her outspoken custom, Janet had placidly 
announced to all listeners that she had come to Smith 
to work, not to play; and Day, like a sensible young 
person, held to the belief that a modicum of play 
was good for any freshman, however earnest. Janet 
was a darling, earnest and honest as a girl could be; 
yet the end of the first week had found her set apart 
as an absolute misfit. Day, grasping the fact, yet 
powerless to prevent it, had done what she could to 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


31 


mitigate the situation by accounting for it on the 
score of Janet’s foreignness. She preached this 
doctrine up and down the house, preached it with 
a grave face which gave the lie to her own secret 
amusement over the girls’ failure to realize that 
dainty, sympathetic Mrs. Leslie, fully as foreign as 
her daughter, was already the plaything and yet 
the dominating spirit of the entire household. 

Facts were facts, however. All Day could do was 
to rescue Janet from the possible imputation of being 
under foot, and to give her a constant and prominent 
place in the room which was bidding fair to be the 
social and political centre of the house. Day herself 
set down its location and its size as the sole causes of 
that prominence. She was too busy just then in 
getting herself adjusted to the new place and people, 
to the strange routine and unfamiliar aims, to pay 
any especial attention to herself. The girls dropped 
into her room and out again, called for her to go to 
walk, asked her to play tennis at the Allen Field. 
Day laid it all to the fact that her door was at the 
head of the stairs and nearly always open. They 
took her as a matter of course, an incident in their 
path, just as they took the stairs and the great brass 
knocker on the outer door. She was there; it was 
easier for them to take her in than not. Her bi- 
weekly letters to Rob and her weekly ones to Jack 
held not the slightest word of her growing popularity. 
Jack, all unaccustomed to American college ways, 
read the letters in the spirit in which they had been 


32 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


written. Rob, however, sprawling on his window 
seat among just such scenes as Day described, 
chuckled to himself as he read of the frequent cau- 
cuses which took place in his sister’s room, chuckled 
to himself, too, at Day’s frank comments in regard 
to Janet Leslie. 

“ Stiff-backed little sinner! ” he said to himself. 
“ She’s Ronald all over again. Neither one of them 
has a bit of their mother’s adaptability. Still, 
Ronald mellowed up a bit under our American in- 
fluence; and Janet may follow his example and get 
demoralized in time. Anyhow, I’ll bet on Day’s 
grit to carry her through.” Then, without stirring 
otherwise, he reached out for ink and paper, and fell 
to discussing the whole situation with Jack Blanchard. 

It had been entirely the doing of Day herself, her 
occupation of the great front room at Mrs. Leslie’s. 
The Argyle plans had been made so far in advance 
that Day’s application for a campus room had 
followed hard upon the heels of her christening. 
Accordingly, she had been set down for a good-sized 
room in the Wallace House when, three months 
before college opened, she announced her change of 
plan. 

“ Daddy,” she said abruptly, as she appeared in 
the doorway of his office, one day in early July; 
“ are you too busy to talk to me? ” 

Mr. Argyle was busy, very busy. Nevertheless, — 

“ What now, Day? ” he asked, as he pushed his 
work aside. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


33 


Day drew up a chair, seated herself and plumped 
both elbows on the corner of the desk at which were 
hatched the plans that ruled a railway traffic stretch- 
ing from sea to sea. 

“ I have many things to say,” she observed calmly. 

Mr. Argyle’s blue eyes twinkled, as he leaned back 
in his revolving chair and poked his fists into the side 
pockets of his coat. Viewed in that mood, he was 
curiously like his son, curiously little more mature. 

“ You generally have, Day,” he assured her. 

“ How unkind, Daddy! But I am in earnest now, 
for it is all about college. Daddy, I think I won’t 
go into the Wallace, after all.” 

The fists came out of the pockets, and Mr. Argyle 
sat up. 

“ Day! Why not? ” 

“ Because I think I’d rather, just for the first 
year, go to Mrs. Leslie’s.” 

“ But why? You’ve always wanted to be on the 
campus.” 

“ I know. But things are different now. Listen, 
Daddy. I really am not fitty about it; I have been 
thinking it all over for weeks and weeks, trying to 
decide. I did decide, more than a week ago, and I 
have been waiting ever since, to make sure I didn’t 
change my mind. Now that I am sure, I think it is 
time I told you. There will be three more years for 
me to be on the campus. For this one year, I’d like 
to try living off it. Then I shall see all sides. And, 
besides that, in a campus house, there wouldn’t be 


34 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


so many freshmen; Mrs. Leslie will have nothing 
else, and the Registrar herself told you she would 
see to it that Mrs. Leslie had only the best sort. 
I’d rather be with the pick of my own class than 
with a mixture of the others.” 

“ You young snob!” her father commented, in 
some amusement at her reasoning, although, even 
now, he realized that Day’s true reasons had not yet 
appeared. 

“ No, Daddy ; that’s not a bit fair! ” she protested, 

“ No,” he admitted honestly; u it isn’t.” 

Bending over, she patted his cuff. Then, — 

“ But it makes it harder for me to say what was 
coming next,” she said slowly. 

“ Out with it, Day.” 

Her cheeks grew scarlet. 

“ It’s Mrs. Leslie. Everybody is bound to find 
out I knew her before, knew her and Janet well. 
If I don’t go into her house, it will look as if I thought 
it wasn’t good enough for me.” 

“ Or she thought you weren’t good enough for it,” 
her father offered unkind amendment. 

Day laughed. 

“ I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “ There’s 
something in it, too. Still, on the other hand, there 
is also something in my ground. I knew Mrs. Leslie 
in her old home; I can go into her house and try 
to make things run smoothly. I can do it, for I know 
both sides, the Canadian and the American girl. 
What is more,” she laughed again; “ I don’t usually 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


35 


eat with my knife and I have pretty clothes. With 
a crowd of girls, both things are bound to count.” 

“ Possibly,” her father assented, in some amuse- 
ment. “ What next? ” 

“ Sidney,” Day made unexpected answer. 

“ What! What has she got to do with it? ” 

“ Everything. Her application hasn’t been in 
long enough to give her a campus room, this year. 
You know how dear the good off-campus houses 
are. Sidney never could afford the sort of place 
where she belongs. A girl like Sidney Stay re mustn’t 
be buried in some little hole.” 

“ Cream always rises,” her father reminded her. 
However, Day was ready for him. 

“ Yes; but it rises better in a pan than in a bottle. 
Sidney needs space. And you ought to remember 
that four years is all the time she has. in all, and that 
four years isn’t so very long a time. We can’t afford 
to throw one of them away.” 

“ We? ” 

“ Yes. You.” 

“ What am I doing about it? ” 

Day gripped the desk afresh with both her elbows 
and dropped her chin upon her clasped hands. She 
spoke low, and with her eyes upon a corner of the 
desk. 

“ Rob and I have talked it over, Daddy ; and we 
agree. I’m willing to go without some things, this 
summer, to make up for it. I want you to take a 
good, big room at Mrs. Leslie’s, and then have Sidney 


36 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


share it with me. Not for nothing; she never would 
accept that, never in this world. But for what she 
would have to pay for a littler room in a side street. 
You can get around it with the Stayres. Tell them 
you’re afraid the Leslie house won’t be full. Tell 
them you don’t want me to room alone, nor with a girl 
you’ve never seen. Tell them that Sidney is older, 
and you want her to look out for me for fear I get 
into mischief. Tell them anything you like, as long 
as you get your way. You’ll get your money’s worth 
out of it, Daddy.” Again she faced him, and her 
laugh was merry, mocking. “ You have always said, 
all this last year, that Sidney was the most helpful 
friend I’ve ever had. Think of our being room- 
mates, and of the good it’s bound to do me in all 
sorts of ways! ” 

“ Day, you’re a — schemer! ” her father said; but 
his eyes made substitution of another word. 

Nevertheless, Day had her way. 

And now, with the term already twelve days old, 
Janet and Sidney and Day were settled in the great 
front room where it would have been hard for an 
outsider to point out the rightful owner. The dress- 
ing bell had rung for dinner, and its clamour had 
produced a scattering among the group clustered, 
three-deep, on all the chairs. Day answered the 
last departing word thrown back from the hall 
outside; then she rose and switched on the lights. 
Then she faced back to Sidney. 

“ Now I will tell you,” she said. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


37 


“ Tell me what? ” 

“ The news I have gleaned for you.” 

“ M-m-m.” Then Sidney took the pins from 
her mouth and slipped off her all-day gown. “ What 
was that? ” 

“ Hear her, Janet! Is this a proper curiosity to 
show me? Listen, Sidney, and let your hair alone 
till I tell you. I have found out the name of your 
goddess.” 

Sidney turned back to the mirror and once more 
raised her brush. 

“ Have you? ” she said indifferently. “ How 
do you know? ” 

“ Helen Pope was there and saw her. She heard 
what she said to you, and told me about it. Helen 
didn’t think she was especially goddess-y; but 
she promised to find out who she was.” 

“ And did? ” Sidney’s tone was still indifferent. 

“ Yes, to-day. I couldn’t wait to tell you; but 
I was bound I wouldn’t say a single word until the 
crowd had gone. Now guess!” 

“ How can I? Who is she, Day?” The brush 
rose and fell in long, even strokes across the thick 
brown hair. 

Day waited until, by very force of the prolonged 
pause, she had established the fact of Sidney’s 
attention and her own consequent importance. 
Then she said, with slow distinctness, — 

“ Merely the captain of the junior basket ball 
team.” 


38 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


The brush flew across the room, and Sidney, 
catching the astonished Janet by the shoulders, 
whirled her away in a mad waltz. When they both 
were breathless, Sidney relaxed her hold and sank 
down on the edge of the nearest bed, which also 
chanced to hold Day’s hat. 

“ The Fates be praised! ” she said, with a solemnity 
and vagueness which the Delphic oracle might have 
envied. “ I’ll make it now, if it kills me. To para- 
phrase the Forty-Niner: basket ball, or bust!” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


39 


CHAPTER FOUR 

“ A FTER all,” Sidney said thoughtfully; “ I 
believe I like the straight-along living better 
than I do the events. The events are fun, of course; 
but everybody makes such a fuss about having a 
good time that the good time loses half its point. 
I prefer things that do themselves.” 

“ This, for instance? ” Janet queried. 

Lifting herself upon her elbow, Sidney stared 
across at the corner whence the doleful voice had 
come. The corner was filled by a bed whose prosaic 
outlines were concealed by a frilly chintz cover all 
yellow roses and green leaves, and a great heap of 
yellow and green chintz pillows. In the midst of the 
pillows, curled up into a small black bundle was 
Janet. The bed was Day’s; but Janet felt herself in 
full possession, since Day, in partnership with five 
other freshmen, was giving a dinner at the Copper 
Kettle to the heroine of the present hour. Janet 
had watched her go, a vision of fluffy white beneath 
a long white coat, and Janet, watching, had given 
tongue to her disapproval. 

“ You look as if you were starting for a citadel 
ball,” she said a little tartly. 

Day, already in the hall with the door closed be- 


40 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


hind her, was too late to resent the words. To Sidney, 
the words meant little; the tone had stood for much. 

u I should like to know why? ” she questioned, 
also tartly. 

“ All that finery.” 

“ What is the matter with it? ” 

“ Unsuitable, just for a school-girl dinner.” 

“ The other girls will wear the same sort of things.” 
“ What of it, as long as it’s entirely out of place? ” 
“ But it is in place,” Sidney argued, not without 
a certain logic on her side. “ It is one of the ways 
here; the girls all do it.” 

Janet’s mouth shut to a hard little line. 

“ Let them. There is no sense in it, though.” 

“ You must admit that it is pretty.” 

“ Overdress is never pretty.” 

Sidney had spent but one short summer upon 
Canadian soil. Nevertheless, she had been swift 
to learn how far the American girl is wont to outclass 
her northern sisters in the mere matter of dress; she 
also knew that the Smith College girls were second 
to none in that unessential, but artistic, detail. 
More than all, however, she realized in the depths 
of her girlish mind how much Day was doing, not 
only for herself, but for Janet, to lead them with her 
into the very heart and centre of the now rapidly 
organizing freshman class. It would have shocked 
all Sidney’s sense of decorum to put this fact into 
words for Janet’s edification. None the less, she 
resented Janet’s criticism of Day at any point. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


41 


Unlike Day Argyle, moreover, Sidney had no notion 
of a certain streak of perverse antagonism which cut 
across the finer grain of Janet’s character. Accord- 
ingly, she committed the fatal error of addressing 
Janet from the pedestal of her two extra years of 
age. 

“ No matter/’ she said carelessly. “ Let’s not 
fight about it any more.” 

“ I’m not fighting,” Janet answered shortly. 

Then silence fell upon the room, bright with gay 
chintz and old white panellings and picture-spotted 
walls. Across the room and above the desk which 
held Day’s writing things, hung her father’s parting 
gift, a portrait of Rob, small, but the work of an 
artist of established fame. Now, in the silence, 
both girls turned their eyes towards the pictured 
face they knew so well, both w T ith the selfsame 
girlish wish that Rob were there to talk to them, 
instead of this uncomprehending comrade. The 
pictured blue eyes were so true and honest, the lips 
smiling out above the fur collar of his winter coat 
were so jolly, yet so steady. It was so that they had 
always known him ; they both were conscious of a 
little homesick twinge of longing for the boy comrade 
they had liked so well. Janet’s twinge, however, 
had its throb of bitterness. It was in that same 
fur-lined coat and otter cap that she had found Rob, 
one winter day, in the old Historical Library at home. 
It was with just that merry, mocking smile upon his 
lips that he had blundered along the first steps 


42 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


leading to a contest which had brought to him 
immediate disaster, and had nearly proved the ship- 
wreck of all their pleasant winter. And her mood, 
that day, had been akin to the one resting upon her 
now. Confronted by the memory of that stormy day 
and all its ugly consequences, Janet shut her teeth 
and resolved to hold herself aloof from all discussion. 

To be sure, Sidney deserved to be the object of 
much discussion. Because she was a little older, 
and happened to be in her own room; because she 
happened to be the roommate of Day Argyle, and 
not the daughter of the woman who took them both 
to board — for, in moods like this, Janet spared 
neither self, nor kith, nor kin — because of these 
things, Sidney had no right to speak to her in that 
toplofty fashion. Janet, once her temper warmed, 
crackled like a little coal. She took no heed of the 
fact that Sidney's tone was the unconscious echo of 
the one used to her own array of lesser Stay res. 
She merely lay quite still and glowered at the por- 
trait which smiled back at her in Rob’s accustomed 
friendly fashion. 

At length, Sidney rose with a little shiver, crossed 
the room and closed the window, for it was late 
October now, the season of the falling leaf, and the 
night was crispy cool. Moreover, apart from the cool- 
ness, Sidney was possessed of a wholly human wish 
that the sudden motion on her part might arouse her 
glum guest to take her departure. With that wish 
in mind, Sidney dawdled about the room for a minute 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


43 


or two. Then, as Janet continued to lie still and 
glower, she picked up her geometry and sat down to 
prepare the next day’s lesson. 

An hour later, the silence was still unbroken, save for 
an occasional impatient wriggle on the part of Janet, 
the occasional fluttering of one of Sidney’s leaves. 
Then, moved by a sudden consciousness that, after all, 
Janet was a guest, a sudden realization of the duties 
imposed by hospitality, Sidney broke the silence. 

“Just think!” she observed, recurring to her 
former theme, as being safely impersonal. “ When 
I came here, Freshman Frolic and Mountain Day 
seemed to me the main events of the year; now they 
both are over, and I don’t seem to have thought 
so very much about them.” 

Janet answered, answered again, and yet again. 
However, it was plain that her mood touched that 
of Sidney at no point. None the less, it was only 
after Sidney’s dozenth ineffectual attempt at con- 
versation that her patience gave way, and she turned 
on Janet a little shortly. 

“ What in the world is the matter, Janet Leslie? 
Don’t you like it here; or what? ” 

“ Well enough. I don’t consider it so very remark- 
able, though.” 

“ Why not? ” 

Janet’s laugh was irritating. 

“ Because I happen to be made that way, I sup- 
pose.” 

After her downright fashion, and because, during 


44 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


the one short summer of their acquaintance, she had 
had no experience of Janet’s contradictious moods, 
Sidney cast aside her book and set herself in earnest 
at the task of finding out the cause of Janet’s dis- 
affection. 

“ What don’t you like: the place or the people? ” 
she demanded. 

“ Oh, the place is well enough,” Janet admitted 
grudgingly. 

“ It’s the people, then. What is the trouble with 
them? ” Sidney’s second demand held a note of 
exasperation. 

“ How do you know the trouble isn’t with me? ” 
Janet asked, in a tone meant to imply disdainful 
rebuke. 

“ I don’t,” Sidney responded, with a bluntness 
which completely took the wind from Janet’s sails. 

Janet lapsed into an aggrieved silence, and, after 
a moment, Sidney went on, — 

“ What is the trouble, anyway, Janet? ” 

Janet gave a little kick at the fat green and yellow 
cushion on the other end of the couch. 

“ Nothing; only I’m sick of being let alone.” 

“ Whose fault is it? ” Sidney asked shortly, for her 
healthy girlish optimism was of the species that looks 
upon the doughnut, and she had scanty patience with 
Janet’s persistent contemplation of the hole. 

“ Everybody’s.” Again Janet’s pump smote the 
green and yellow pillow. 

During all her life, Sidney had held to the doctrine 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


45 


that frankness, perfect and entire, was the sole line 
of argument for her to take. She took it now. 

“ Now look here, Janet Leslie,” she burst out with 
a suddenness which fairly took away Janet’s breath; 
“ it is a good deal of it your own fault. You came 
here, as we all did, a stranger. You didn’t meet the 
girls half way; you waited for them to come three 
quarters, and, of course, they wouldn’t. You treat 
the faculty the same way. You seem to think the 
whole of Smith College is going to stop and hold 
out its hands and say, ‘ Why, here is that dear little 
Janet Leslie. How glad we are to see you!’ But 
colleges don’t say that, nor people, either. They 
bow and smile, and then they wait to see whether 
you are going to smile back.” 

“ We Canadians don’t do that sort of thing,” 
Janet said a little resentfully, as Sidney paused for 
breath. 

“ Some of you Canadians do, then. Look at your 
mother, here five weeks, and the darling of the whole 
house. Every freshman that isn’t in this house 
envies the lot of us that are; and it is your mother 
that has done it. She was Mother Leslie to every- 
body, inside of twenty-four hours; and we’d rather 
be lectured by her than hugged by the President 
himself. She is one Canadian. Jack Blanchard is 
another. Jack is a perfect mountain of dignity and 
self-respect ; but it never gets under his feet and trips 
him up, when he has a chance to be nice to people.” 

“ I am nice to people,” Janet objected. 


46 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Nice; but not very much so,” Sidney told her 
flatly. “ You merely accept the girls with resignation; 
that's about all. You mourn because you aren't 
popular; but it’s chiefly your own fault.” 

Janet lifted her chin. 

“ I don't run about, hunting popularity,” she said, 
and there was an aggressive accent on the pronoun. 

“ Does that mean me? For I don't.” 

“ What about the basket ball team? ” 

Then Janet's eyes blazed, for Sidney burst out 
laughing. 

“ Good gracious, child, is that the bee in your 
bonnet? ” she asked. “ Of course, I want to make 
the team. It's the only thing I can do well; I love 
the game, and I've worked for the team with all my 
might, and I hope I'll make it, too. What's the harm, 
so long as I make it by straight, hard work, and not 
by pulling any wires? ” 

Janet shifted her ground. 

“ Then look at Day, running for office! ” 

However, Sidney, though willing to rise in her own 
defence, scorned to do as much for Day, for Day 
who, to Sidney's loyal eyes, stood head and shoulders 
above the need of any defence. 

“ I think we will leave Day out of the discussion,” 
she said, with an air of finality which, albeit quiet, 
yet held its flavour of rebuke. 

Janet, resenting the rebuke, delivered counter 
rebuke. 

“ How arrogant you are, Sidney! Paul used to 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


47 


say so, down at Grande Riviere, and I can’t see that 
you have changed at all.” 

Sidney laughed carelessly. 

“ Paul said bossy, not arrogant ,” she corrected. 

“ Yes; but I shouldn’t use such words. But why 
should we leave Day out of the discussion? ” Janet 
persisted. 

Sidney kept her temper with an effort. Janet 
was manifestly trying to render herself unpleasant. 
Moreover, to Sidney’s mind, she was succeeding in 
a fashion beyond her wildest hopes. 

“ Janet, what is the matter with you, nowadays? ” 
she asked abruptly. “ You never used to be like ' 
this, when we were down at Grande Riviere.” 

“ Like what? ” 

“ Critical and — cranky.” 

Janet digested the pill as best she could. Then, — 

“ I never had things to irritate me there.” 

“ What’s the matter here? ” 

“ Things are different.” 

“ How? ” 

“ In Quebec, I was as good as anybody.” 

“ Well, aren’t you here? ” 

To anybody but a girl, Janet’s reply would have 
appeared discursive. 

“ Look at Day’s clothes! ” she said. 

Sidney understood; yet it suited her, just then, to 
appear uncomprehending. 

“ Yes, they’re lovely. What about them? ” 

“ I can’t have clothes like that.” 


48 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Neither can I. That doesn’t prevent my appre- 
ciating Day’s, though.” 

Janet sat up and hurled her next question at Sidney 
with all the force of a deadly projectile. 

“ What would Day be without her clothes? ” 

“ Undressed,” Sidney answered, with unexpected 
flippancy. Then, crossing the room, she sat down 
on the edge of the heap of pillows. “ See here, Janet,” 
she said; “ I said we’d leave Day out of the discus- 
sion. It didn’t seem- to me quite decent, after all 
she has done for us, for the two of us to be talking 
her over, behind her back.” 

“ I’m as good as Day,” Janet protested irritably. 

“ No,” Sidney made flat response; “ you aren’t. 
There aren’t so many like her. Look at the way 
she is coming into recognition among the class. 
Wait till next Saturday’s class meeting, and see what 
happens then. Day Argyle is booked for office, and 
she hasn’t lifted a finger to bring it on herself, either.” 

“ It’s just because she has such crowds of clothes,” 
Janet sniffed. 

“ It is not. As it happens, she has four gowns to 
our one, and they are four times as good; but, if we 
had the gowns and she had a gingham pinafore, 
she’d be Day Argyle, just the same. Besides, that 
sort of thing doesn’t count here. Look at Alice 
Broderick. She is one of the most popular seniors 
this year; she hasn’t a cent to her name, never saw a 
tailor and has washed dishes in the laboratory to pay 
for her college course. She is in everything that 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


49 


stirs, the best invitation house, and all the rest of it. 
As long as she is Alice Broderick, nobody cares 
whether she wears satin or sacking. It's so with Day. 
Sooner or later, you'll find it out. Keep still, though, 
for here she comes, and I don't care to have her know 
how we've been talking her over. Good night." 
And, with surpassing deftness, Sidney steered Janet 
from the room, just as Day halted on the stairs to 
call a last good night to the group below. 

Day came in, beaming, alert and elate. The dinner 
had been of her own planning; it had also been a 
thorough-going success, and the heroine had been 
loud in her expressions of appreciation. Day alter- 
nately sang to herself and imparted bits of informa- 
tion to Sidney, while she took out pins and untied 
ribbons and unclasped beads. Then, as she backed 
up to Sidney to be unhooked, she made an abrupt 
change of theme. 

“ What was the matter with Janet? " she asked. 

“ Nothing. Why? " 

Day screwed her head about and peered over her 
shoulder into the place where Sidney's eyes should 
have been. Sidney's head was bent, however, her 
eyes intent upon a refractory hook which seemed 
loath to let go. 

“ I thought she looked as if she had been crying." 

“ Janet! Does she ever cry?" Sidney demanded 
mendaciously. 

“ I ; ve seen her. So has Rob.. And she stalked 
past me like Banquo’s ghost." 


50 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Perhaps she had something on her mind.” 
Again Sidney spoke carelessly, evasively, less from 
a desire to shield Janet from a charge of emotionalism 
than from a sturdy resolve to keep from Day the 
material of their late talk. 

However, Day had her theories, for she knew 
Janet of old. It was one thing to spend a country 
summer in the next house; it was quite another 
matter to winter with her under the same roof, 
especially in a climate where the winter was nine 
months long. Sidney thought she knew Janet; 
Day really did know her, know her at her best and 
at her worst. And it was an honest, girlish desire 
to keep that knowledge away from her classmates 
which led Day, bending down to pull out her bed- 
box, to observe, — 

“ Oh, dearie me! I do hope and pray she isn’t 
going into one of her cranky fits.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


51 


CHAPTER FIVE 

“ 1%/T OTHER LESLIE, may I come in? ” 

-LtX “ Who is it? Sidney? Yes, dear; of course.” 
Mrs. Leslie smiled a welcome, and drew forward 
the little white rocking chair which the girls were 
wont to name the stool of repentance. 

Sidney, a rain-soaked tarn o’shanter in one hand, 
a pile of books in the other, cast herself down into the 
white chair and stared reproachfully at her feet. 

“ Really, I’m too muddy to come in here,” she 
said apologetically, as result of her reproachful 
staring. 

“ To-morrow is sweeping day, and the rug will dry.” 
Mrs. Leslie picked up her sewing. “ What a pretty 
tarn, Sidney ! ” 

Sidney laughed. 

“ It’s Day’s; the Argyle tartan, you know. I 
couldn’t find mine, and it was too wet to go bare- 
headed, so I helped myself to this/’ she explained. 

Mrs. Leslie’s frown was all for the end of silk which 
balked at the eye of her needle. When it had finally 
entered, she smiled at Sidney. 

“ I wonder if it is an American trick for girls to put 
their clothes into one common fund,” she said. 

“ No; it’s merely a local custom, At home, I’d 


52 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


flay Phyllis — that’s my sister — if she touched my 
gowns. Up here, we none of us care. Last Sunday, 
Day and Amy Pope changed everything, frocks and 
hats and coats and all, and went off to church to- 
gether. We nearly went into a fit, when we saw 
them come in; but they had the worst of it, for the 
minister preached on extravagance in dress, and 
they didn’t know where to look. I could wear Day’s 
clothes, half the time. She keeps offering them; but 
I hate to, hers are so much better than mine. I can’t 
seem to make her understand why I won’t; and she 
thinks it is all great fun, the way the girls change 
about. She has on the blouse of my pongee gown 
now. Where’s Janet? ” 

“ She said she was going over to the library to 
study.” 

“ In this pour? Why didn’t she go to our room? ” 

Mrs. Leslie’s smile was free from any sting. 

“ For the same reason you gave about Day’s clothes, 
perhaps.” 

“ What do you mean? ” Sidney looked up sharply. 

“ That the changing about is all on one side.” 

“ That’s nonsense. Besides, I’m here.” 

“ Yes. But — ” 

Sidney interrupted. 

“ Did Janet say that? ” 

It would have taken a keener ear than that of Sidney 
to make out the little sigh which prefaced Mrs. Les- 
lie’s next words. 

“ Sidney dear, when you have lived with Janet 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


53 


as long as I have, you will know she doesn’t say 
things.” 

“ No.” Sidney rocked violently for a minute or 
two. “ But she thinks them, just the same.” 

There was another silence which lasted until Mrs. 
Leslie had threaded a second needle, then a third. 
At length Sidney spoke again. 

“ It’s an awful responsibility to be a freshman,” 
she sighed. 

Instantly Mrs. Leslie laid aside her sewing, with 
the little air of respectful attention which had gone 
so far in winning for her the loyalty of the girls. 

“ What now, dear child? ” 

“ All sorts of tilings; but nothing especial. I think 
I am cross and worried; that is all.” 

Mrs. Leslie waited. She had known Sidney of old, 
and the renewed observations taken during the past 
six weeks had only gone to confirm her earlier judg- 
ment. Without something that she desired to say, 
something that she deemed of real importance, 
Sidney, in her present water-soaked condition, would 
not have sat and rocked the little white chair until 
its aged joints creaked with the motion. Neverthe- 
less, not only had Mrs. Leslie brought up two daugh- 
ters; she had been a girl herself, and girlhood is girl- 
hood, after all, whether it be spent north or south 
of the frontier. Accordingly, she waited. 

“ It would be quite enough for the first year, I 
suspect, if we didn’t do a thing but get used to the 
place,” Sidney observed at length. 


54 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Again she fell to rocking with a vigour which 
betokened the fact that she neither wished nor ex- 
pected an answer. Then she interrupted her rocking 
to speak once more. 

“ There’s an immense amount of nonsense talked 
at us, before we come to college,” she went on thought- 
fully. “ It is fashionable to assure us we must be on 
our guard against the new temptations that lurk on 
every hand. That’s all twaddle. There’s no more 
temptation here than at home. In some ways, there 
isn’t as much; and the girls take it out of one more 
than one’s own family can, or dare, do. What they’d 
better do is to let the temptations take care of them- 
selves, and give us a little idea how to get our bearings 
among so many new girls and in a life that is practi- 
cally all routine. Freshman year is a hard year, Mrs. 
Leslie.” 

“ Harder than the others? ” 

Sidney nodded, with the absolute conviction of 
her who sees but one side of the question. 

“ Yes, for there are more things to worry one, 
more things to take our minds. The classes alone 
ought to do it. They are supposed to be the main 
thing — that is, the faculty seem to suppose so; we 
girls don’t. But we have to get through them, some 
way or other, and we aren’t all natural grinds, like 
Janet. Then we have to learn the ropes, and there 
are so many of them. I know I shall catch my toes 
in some new one, the very day I walk up to get my 
degree. All that is bad enough, enough to cockle 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


55 


one’s brain into all sorts of convolutions. But the 
thing I mind most is finding out just where to draw 
my own chalk-line. ,, 

“ Chalk-line? ” After all said and done, Mrs. 
Leslie was British. Being British, she could never 
quite keep pace with American metaphors. 

“ Yes, the chalk-line I draw to walk by,” Sidney 
explained, with something as near impatience as she 
could ever show to gentle Mrs. Leslie. “ It’s almost 
impossible to do it here, to find the exact middle 
between running after popularity and sticking out 
your chin at the people you meet. It isn’t necessary 
to be rampant, just because you’re independent.” 

This time, Mrs. Leslie felt she could cope with the 
question. 

“ Who is rampant, Sidney? ” 

“ Nobody; that’s just the trouble. They want her 
to be. And that’s another trouble. It’s her way, 
the way she always has had. And none of the girls 
know it. They seem to think we all come here with 
a brand-new set of ways put on for the occasion. 
Because a girl is nice to people, they appear to regard 
it as a trap to catch votes, not a habit she was accus- 
tomed to use at home. For the average freshman 
intellect, a girl doesn’t have any habits, or any past. 
She comes here, pop! brand-new and ready-made, 
just in time to catch the train, guaranteed to be 
adaptable to every college need.” And Sidney’s 
exasperation ended in a giggle at her own phraseology. 

Mrs. Leslie’s laugh echoed that of Sidney. 


56 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ I’m afraid it is true, Sidney; only it hadn’t 
occurred to me to put it in just that way before. 
But who is She? ” 

“ She? ” Sidney echoed blankly. 

“ The case in point. There always is a case in 
point, you know.” 

Sidney flushed hotly. To do her justice, she had 
fully meant to argue out the case on its impersonal 
merits. She hesitated. Then, — 

“ I hate to gossip, Mrs. Leslie. You know that. 
I hope you knew it at Grande Riviere. However, 
now you ask, it’s — it’s Day.” 

“ Day? ” Mrs. Leslie looked up in surprise. 
“ What has Day done? ” 

“ Nothing at all. Day wouldn’t,” Sidney said 
indignantly. “ Besides, do you suppose I would tell 
of it, if she had? ” The chair came to a halt so sudden 
that the books slid out of Sidney’s lap to the 
floor. 

She let them lie. 

“ Day hasn’t done a thing,” she iterated. “ It is 
what people are doing to her.” 

“ What’s that? ” 

“ Saying things. It’s all politics, and it makes 
me so cross.” Sidney rose and walked to the window, 
where she stood drumming on the pane. Suddenly 
she faced about and spoke with the boylike directness 
natural to her at times. “ It is this, Mother Leslie. 
I stopped in at the Hatfield, on my way home, went 
up to Nan Withrow’s room. It was full of freshmen. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


57 


girls I never saw before, and they all were discussing 
class elections. You know, after being put off and 
put off and put off, they are to come, next Saturday. 
Well, after a while, Nan was called down to the 
telephone, and she was gone ever so long. She was 
hardly out of the room, when they began talking 
about Day, about her being up for president. It was 
all so sudden, I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t head them 
off. They said she would never have had the nomina- 
tion, if she hadn’t had so much money and such 
wonderful clothes and a father in Who's Who. Then, 
worse than that, they went on saying that she had 
worked for it ever since she came, that all her jolly 
little ways and her looking out that people have a 
good time, and her having all sorts, rich girls and self- 
help girls and shabby girls, all drinking tea and making 
chafing-dish things in her room, all that was so much 
scheme to make herself prominent and get votes. 
Just as if Day Argyle hadn’t been doing that sort of 
thing ever since she was born, and her father before 
her, and Rob, too! There isn’t a living soul that 
knows that better than I.” Sidney strode across to 
the chair again and sat herself down with wrathful 
emphasis. 

“ Or than I,” Mrs. Leslie added gently. 

“ Or Jack Blanchard,” Sidney capped her addition. 
“ Look at what Day has done for him. I sometimes 
wonder if she knows he isn’t a real brother. Of course, 
he is a darling and deserves it; but not many girls 
would have taken him in, as Day did.” 


58 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ What did you do? ” Mrs. Leslie asked. 

“ I? I adored him at first sight. He really is very 
splendid, you know.” 

“ To the girls, I mean.” 

“ Oh.” Sidney laughed a little grimly. " I 
waited till they were through, all through. Then I 
told them what I thought.” 

And Mrs. Leslie, hearing, smiled. She had no 
doubt but that the telling was terse and specific. 
Then there came another pause. Sidney’s mood had 
talked itself out, in the talking had found relief. 
Now she was gathering courage to begin upon an- 
other. 

“ Mother Leslie,” she asked at length and with a 
suddenness so spasmodic as to show how close the 
question lay to her heart; “ is a week from Sunday 
night, my night? ” 

Mrs. Leslie counted swiftly. 

" It really doesn’t make any difference, Sidney. 
A good many of the girls will be away, and there will 
be room enough. There always is, for the matter of 
that. The house is so large that I can always squeeze 
in another one or two. Who is it? ” 

“ Irene Jessup.” The name came with a little 
catch in Sidney’s breath. 

“ Who is she? Freshman? ” For as yet, Mrs. Les- 
lie was weak in the matter of college lions. 

“ Dear me, no! If she were, I shouldn’t be half so 
scared,” Sidney returned frankly. “ She is captain 
of the junior basket ball team; moreover, she is 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


59 


adorable. She has been ever so nice to me, and I 
want to do something to show I appreciate it, and 
your Sunday night suppers are so lovely.” 

Mrs. Leslie laughed at the wheedling tone Sidney 
had taken on. Nevertheless, Sidney’s words were 
not without foundation. Mrs. Leslie’s Sunday night 
suppers, a custom dating from her own most prosper- 
ous days in the great stone house in Louis Street at 
home, had always had a flavour all their own. 

“ I’d love to meet her, Sidney. Be sure you get her 
to come, and be sure I know which she is. Among 
all these new faces, I may make a mistake, you know,” 
Mrs. Leslie said cordially. “ My only worry is as to 
who can take your place. I had counted on you to 
serve, you see.” 

Sidney’s face fell. 

“ I’m sorry to miss that, Mother Leslie. I love 
to be doing things. What about Day? ” 

“ Day has served, for four weeks running. I hate 
to ask her again.” 

“ What an idea! She adores it. I’ll go and tell 
her now.” Sidney started to her feet. 

At the door, however, she turned and looked 
back. 

“ Mother Leslie, you are a comfort,” she said. 

And Mrs. Leslie smiled and nodded a farewell. 
Then she fluffed up the white chair cushion for its 
next incumbent. 

The next incumbent, as it chanced, was Day, who 
came in, wet and blown and wholly buoyant, to show 


60 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Mrs. Leslie the products of a down-town shopping 
tour. At her heels came Amy Pope who was Day’s 
chosen friend, whenever Sidney was too busy to fill 
that, her permanent and rightful place. After Amy 
came Madeleine Rogers, the best talker in the house, 
and Elsie Brown, voted by the girls the best listener, 
and exceedingly popular on that account. And then 
another dropped in, and another yet, until the bed 
was fringed with girls and the white chair groaned 
beneath a double burden. And the gossip and 
chatter ran on, punctuated by constant appeals to 
Mrs. Leslie for opinion and advice, until the dressing 
bell aroused them all to a consciousness of their 
ruffled hair and walking-skirts. Day, as she de- 
parted in the very centre of the chattering group, 
called back over her shoulder, — 

“ Mother Leslie, after all, isn’t college just the finest 
thing that ever happened to any girl? ” 

The last girl vanished and the last door shut, there 
came a little tap at Mrs. Leslie’s door. Then the door 
opened. 

“ Is everybody gone? ” 

“ Janet! Where have you been, child? ” 

“ Down-stairs.” 

“ Why didn’t you come up here? ” 

“ I thought the room was full enough without me,” 
Janet answered. 

“ Janet! ” 

“ Mummy? ” 

“ Come over here and cuddle, dearie.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


61 


Janet shook her head with a dreariness which 
caught her mother’s eye more than did the obvious 
perversity of the little gesture. 

“ What’s the use? ” 

“ You used to like to.” 

“ Yes; but things were different. There weren’t 
so many of me then.” 

“ Janet child, what do you mean? ” Mrs. Leslie’s 
face and voice were startled. 

“ What I say, mummy.” The perversity had left 
her voice, and only the dreariness remained. “ It 
used to be just you and I, especially after Ronald 
went. Of course, it was nicer, when he was there. 
Even then, though, it was just us. Now it is every- 
body.” 

“ But everybody isn’t us,” Mrs. Leslie said. 

“ I’m not so sure,” Janet made discontented 
answer. “ It is all right for you. You like it. I 
don’t.” 

“ Don’t like what, dearie? ” 

“ All of it, such a crowd and fuss, the girls in here 
all the time, calling you Mother Leslie and telling you 
things and all the rest of it. I suppose it is good for 
the house, as a point of business.” She laughed 
shortly. “ However, it makes me feel,” and the laugh 
broke into a sob; “ as if I were getting slowly crowded 
out.” 

“ Janet, dear child!” And Janet felt herself 
caught in a pair of loving arms, pulled down and 
cuddled into the selfsame spot where, as a little, 


62 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


little girl, she had been wont to bring all her woes, 
bring them and leave them there. 

At last, she raised her head and flung her arms 
around her mother’s neck. 

“ Mummy,” she said contritely; “ I know I am 
horrid and selfish. I know you came here for me, 
gave up home and everything else, and came down 
here to open a college boarding house,” she spoke the 
term with untold scorn; “ just so I could have edu- 
cation, training for a work I may never have brains 
enough to do. I know it is hard for you, hard and 
horrid. I love to have the girls like you; I wish they 
liked me. They don’t, though. And, when I am here 
with the others, I can see they don’t say half the 
things to you they would, if I weren’t here. And I 
sit here and listen, and it seems to me you understand 
them and talk to them and pet them just the same 
way you used to do me, and — and I was the only 
one for so many, many years. Can’t you understand? 
I try to tell myself that it is good for the house, good 
for our success; but it’s no use. I don’t like it any 
better for all that. Mummy,” she took down her 
arms ; “ do you ever wish it wasn’t Day Argyle who 
was helping us on so much? ” 

“ No, dearie. Why? ” 

“ Peskiness and perversity,” Janet made sombre 
answer. “ Still, I do wish it had been somebody else.” 

“ Why? ” Mrs. Leslie asked again. 

Janet heaved a deep sigh. 

“ Because she is so popular, and so everlastingly 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


63 


good,” she responded. “ She is good, too; she won't 
even give me the satisfaction of being goody and 
horrid. And yet, perfection is exasperating, now and 
then.” 

“ Day isn't perfect, dear.” 

“ No,” Janet said restively; “ but she is uncom- 
fortably near it. That’s what used to fret me so, in 
Quebec. Rob was a dear, and he wasn’t above having 
a good, downright fight now and then. If he didn’t 
like things, he spoke his mind; then he forgot all 
about it. Sidney Stayre is like him in that. Day, 
if she likes you, is adorable. If she doesn’t, she smiles 
that sweet, superior little smile of hers and walks 
away, and you don’t know till the end of time why 
she went, nor what she thought about things while 
she was going. I’d rather she said it out and had 
it over; and I am not the only one in the class that 
thinks so, either.” And Janet nodded in vehement 
support of her own statement, as she rose to smooth 
her ruffled plumage in time for dinner. 


64 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


CHAPTER SIX 

N EVERTHELESS, and in spite of Janet’s stric- 
tures, the Student Building, late the next 
Saturday afternoon, was ringing with the couplet, 

“ Here’s to Day Argyle! 

You can know her by her smile.” 

But Day’s smile was not unique, for the whole 
singing, shouting freshman class was smiling broadly. 
They had won the president of their choice, and now 
they were making merry in her honour. 

There had been no especial fight. One or two 
jealous little factions had put up their candidates, 
more for the sake of opposing what they were pleased 
to term “ the Leslie house ring ” than for any in- 
herent objection to Day herself. And Day, w T ho, 
from start to finish, had persisted in regarding her 
nomination as a superfine joke, was overwhelmed 
and silenced by the result of the first ballot. From 
the time that its result was announced, but one girl 
had shared with Day in the cheering. That was one 
of the rival candidates who moved Day’s election be 
made unanimous without further balloting. She 
was the candidate of the Hatfield House grumblers, 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


65 


and, by the promptness of her gracious courtesy, she 
won her own election for the coming year. 

Sidney and Amy Pope escorted Day to the chair. 
Then, hoarse, breathless and exultant, they settled 
themselves in a corner of the room to lend a tolerant 
attention to the election of the other officers. 

“ After all,” Amy said; “ it was about what we 
had every reason to expect.” 

Sidney shook her head, while she surveyed her 
scarlet and aching hands. 

“ I didn’t expect it in the least,” she averred. 

“ You didn’t think that Day would get it? ” Amy 
looked as blank as she might have done at some bit 
of blasphemy. 

“ I thought she would win out in time; but I was 
sure it would take time.” 

“ Who would vote against Day Argyle? ” 

Sidney nodded composedly towards a little group 
in the opposite corner, a group who were whispering 
together, glancing furtively, the while, now at Day, 
now at Sidney. 

“ Those girls.” 

Amy cast a swift glance at the group. 

“ Who are they, anyway? ” she asked. “ I don’t 
know them.” 

Sidney laughed. 

“ That doesn’t count. There are four hundred 
and seventy-three girls in the class, and you have been 
here six weeks. Besides, they know you. I don’t 
remember their names; but I b 1 mdered into one of 


66 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


their merrymakings, one afternoon. They didn’t 
find out that I was Day’s roommate, till it was just 
a little bit too late to have the information do them 
any good. In the meantime, I have found out how a 
certain set of girls regard our house.” 

“ How is that? ” Amy asked, after both girls had 
paused to write their votes for treasurer. 

“ As headquarters of snobbery,” Sidney replied 
succinctly. 

Amy’s great-great-grandfather had been Secretary 
of State in his day, and his descendants had imbibed 
his traditions. Therefore, — 

“ What nonsense! ” Amy said, with a vigour which 
turned a dozen curious ears towards their low-voiced 
conversation. 

“ Of course. It’s arrant nonsense,” Sidney agreed. 
“ It’s not the attitude of our girls in the least; and, 
even if it were, I fancy Mother Leslie would take it 
out of us as soon as she discovered it. I was furious 
at first. Then, when I began to ask about those other 
girls, I understood it all a little better. They are girls 
from little bits of towns, girls with a good deal of 
money, but not out of a large school. They don’t 
care about anything very much, only just to get out 
of all the work they can, and be leaders in something, 
no matter what. I hate that sort.” 

“ But I don’t see why they hate us,” Amy made 
thoughtful comment. 

“ Because we haven’t paid them any attention, 
and it has turned them jealous,” Sidney replied 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


67 


promptly. u Of course, we are the largest freshman 
house; most of you are girls who count in the class, 
brains and clothes and all the rest of it.” 

“ And basket ball? ” Amy suggested. 

Sidney laughed. 

“ Not if they can keep me out,” she said frankly. 

Amy turned and stared at her in open consternation. 

“ Sidney Stayre! What do you mean? ” she ques- 
tioned. 

Sidney laughed again. 

“ I have been finding out many things of late,” 
she assured Amy. “ However, sufficient unto the 
day— And, speaking of Day, doesn’t she look 
distracting in that great green hat? ” 

Day, indeed, did look distracting. It had been 
chance alone, chance and a sudden cold day, that had 
led her to don a brand-new gown, that morning. 
Now, sitting there before her enthusiastic class and 
growing alternately hot and cold as she tried to 
remember the functions of her official position, she 
was totally unconscious that she was looking her very 
best. Sidney was conscious of it, though, conscious 
enough for two. In fact, that election afternoon, 
Sidney’s gratification in her class’s choice of president 
had been far, far greater than that of Day herself. 

Day took her new honours carelessly, then, so 
carelessly as to cause a certain disappointment in the 
minds of those of her adherents who had voted less 
with the idea of the good of the class than from a wish 
to give to Day a season of pure pleasure. Her care- 


68 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


lessness, however, merely veiled her girlish happiness. 
The office in itself was nothing. It counted a good 
deal, though, that the girls had wished her for it. 
The home letters counted, too, and Rob’s excited 
telegram, and the box of roses that held Jack’s card. 
The outward carelessness was only a mask, after all; 
but even the mask broke and the carelessness vanished 
before the announcement that a dozen of her most 
loyal supporters were going to give her a dinner at 
Boyden’s, the next Saturday night. 

“I just won’t go; that’s all!” she mutinied to 
Sidney, in the privacy of their own room and long 
after bedtime. 

“ Why not? ” was Sidney’s not unnatural question. 

“ Because I won’t,” Day proclaimed flatly. 

Sidney, out of the midst of pillows and blankets, 
eyed her with sleepy amusement. 

“ You owe it to your class, dearest,” she droned. 

“ Bother the class! I am tired of being lionized for 
nothing. Exactly four hundred and thirty-four 
freshmen have stopped me in Seelye Hall to con- 
gratulate me.” 

“ Where are the other nine? ” 

“ Nine? There are thirty-nine of them who didn’t 
want me and who have the courage of their convictions 
enough to show it.” Day laughed. “ I could gladly 
take them to my bosom for it, too.” 

“ Horrid crowd!” Sidney commented. “But 
about the dinner, Day, you’ll have to go. It won’t 
be decent not to.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Day, brushing her hair, paused to wrinkle her nose 
at her own reflection in the mirror. 

“ Don’t care. I am tired of the fuss, now at the end 
of the third day. At the end of the eighth, it will get 
intolerable.” 

“ Most likely it will be over by then, and you will 
be glad of the dinner to warm it up once more.” 

Day shook her head. 

“ Besides — ” she said. 

“ Besides what? ” 

“ I wasn’t going to tell you; I meant to give you 
a surprise. However, it is all spoiled now,” she said. 

“ What is? ” Sidney asked sleepily. “ Either your, 
words don’t convey much meaning, Day, or else I’m 
not very awake.” 

“ It’s both; but I think I can wake you up with my 
news. The reason I hate the dinner so, is that Jack 
is coming up for Sunday.” 

“ Day! Truly?” Sidney’s sleepiness vanished, and 
she sat up in bed with the suddenness of a Jack-in- 
the-box. 

“ Yes. He will be up at eight forty-five, Saturday, 
and I was going to sneak down to meet him and then 
give you a grand surprise. Now it’s all spoiled.” 
Day came to sit on the edge of Sidney’s bed, her hair 
still covering her shoulders like a curtain. 

“ Not spoiled a bit. You wouldn’t have had much 
good of him, that night, anyway. And Sunday you 
can have full swing. I wonder what the girls will 
think of him.” 


70 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Day rose and resumed her brush. 

“ Who cares what they think of him? ” she said 
disdainfully. “ He is Jack, and we know him. 
Besides, he is coming here to see us, not them.” 

Sidney sank back among her blankets with a laugh. 

“ Wait till bedtime, Sunday,” she advised. 

And Day made tranquil answer, — 

“ I'm quite willing.” 

There is surprisingly little place for the visiting man 
in Smith College life. At certain periods of the year, 
he becomes an absolute necessity for the success of 
the function of the hour, and, like all necessities, he 
is welcome. At Sunday vespers, he is tolerable; at 
Monday morning chapel, he is likely to be a thing of 
comment and derision; by Monday noon, he is mani- 
festly in the way. However valiantly the young 
hostess may smile and chatter, in her secret heart 
she is well aware that, in the daily routine, the pres- 
ence of a man guest gets in the way of the perfect 
working of the machinery. There are too many things 
happening from which, of necessity, he is barred out, 
things which she herself is loath to miss. And this 
condition increases, as the years go on. The freshman 
welcome is the heartiest one of all. 

And then, there are men and men. Where fifty 
cloy, one attracts. The freshman hostess, knowing 
this, grips firmly her secret hope that her own guest 
may be the one to dominate his unaccustomed sur- 
roundings. Accordingly, Sidney’s heart beat high 
with anticipation, as she stepped out of the carriage 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


n 


in which Day had insisted she should go to meet Jack 
Blanchard. She was but just in time, for, even 
while she was crossing the platform, the train rolled 
in, and Jack swung himself down from the rearmost 
car. It was an instant before their hands met and, 
in that instant, Sidney took heedful note of the broad- 
shouldered, well-knit figure, of the firm stride, the 
proud poise of the head, the thin, close lips and the 
steady eyes above, even of the ugly scar which, 
curiously enough, seemed only to add a dignity, an 
emphasis to the manly attractiveness of the rest of 
the face. Sidney noted it all, judged it with the 
added impartiality gained by her two months of 
separation and of mingling with her critical mates, 
noted it and w T as content. It was as she had always 
said: Jack Blanchard would pass muster anywhere. 

“ What was it? ” he asked directly, as he still held 
her hand in his own cordial grasp. 

“ What was what? ” 

“ The question in your eyes? ” 

She laughed. 

“ You are too observant, Jack. I may as well 
confess. I was trying to look at you through other 
people’s eyes for once.” 

“ Why not your own? ” 

“ Because I know just how you look through them,” 
she made unhesitating answer. 

“ And the others? ” he queried, half in jest, half 
earnest. 

“ You’re always Jack,” she replied. And her smile 


72 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


told him the rest, , told him, too, how welcome he 
really was. 

Both the girls, next day, tried to be devoutly 
unconscious of their satisfaction in their escort, as 
they walked into church; but the attempt resulted 
in dismal failure. Jack, on his side, was supremely 
unconscious of any interest he might be arousing. 
A man nearing the middle twenties who, for two 
years, has worn the Queen’s uniform, offered himself 
as target for Boer bullets and come home with a 
D. S. 0., as a rule gets the self-consciousness knocked 
out of him. Moreover, like a true Briton, Jack had 
always been too much in earnest about things to have 
any time for self-consciousness. For the rest, he had 
a curious trick of making other men seem fussy and 
undersized beside him, of turning the best of them 
to the likeness of a figure on a haberdasher’s fashion 
sheet. Rob Argyle alone had come out, unharmed 
by the comparison; but Rob, though more buoyant 
and irresponsible, yet possessed his own full share of 
Jack’s steady, kindly dignity and unconscious poise. 
And Rob had scored an entire success, in those open- 
ing days of the term. 

Of his own success, then, Jack was supremely, com- 
ically unconscious. He had come there to see Day and 
Sidney; he was glad to see all of their present sur- 
roundings, their friends included. However, it was 
only because they were Day’s friends that Jack 
found them interesting. Years afterwards, he could 
have described Day’s costume, albeit in his own 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


73 


Vernacular, correctly and down to the least detail. 
He was provokingly short-sighted and dense regarding 
the trio of hats and faces which blocked his every 
effort to see the preacher’s face. Jack was uncon- 
scious; but, in the depths of his soul, he was bored. 
Man-like, he smiled valiantly for a time; but, in the 
end, he gave tongue to his boredom. 

“ I say, Day, isn’t dress parade about over? ” he 
murmured in her ear, as they came out from 
dinner. 

She laughed. 

“ Yes, till the next event.” 

“ What’s that? ” 

“ Vespers.” 

More church? ” 

“ Yes, with a difference,” Sidney interposed. 
“ Sunday vespers is a place where we go to sing 
hymns in our party coats.” 

Jack groaned. 

“ Cut it out, Day,” he adjured her. 

“ But I did want — ” 

“ What? ” 

She had the grace to blush. 

“ To show you off, Jack,” she confessed. 

“ Me! ” Jack’s tone betrayed his consternation at 
the thought. “ I’m no advance show for a dime 
museum, Day.” 

“ No; but you’d be so stunning, up in rubber row,” 
she urged him. 

Laughing, he shook his head. 


74 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ I’m coy, Day; I shrink from the eye of the world, 
especially when my scar is on the audience side.” 

“You don’t mind that? ” 

“ I don’t exactly love it,” he admitted. “ However, 
like most things, it’s a mere detail. But I came 
here to see you, Day, not to inspect the college. I 
like the girls; they’re pretty girls and wear good 
clothes. I’ve seen them, though. Now can’t we tramp 
off somewhere together, and have a good old talk? ” 

Sidney leaned out of the window to call after them, 
as they went up the street. 

“ Have a good time, children, and come home, all 
talked out. And be sure you come back in season for 
supper, for you know I am going to have my goddess.” 

Jack turned to Day a face of utter puzzlement. 

“ What’s a goddess? ” he demanded. 

And Day’s answering laugh cut across the Sunday 
silence, as she said callously, — 

“ An upper class girl who likes to be smirked at.” 

None the less, Jack found himself in a mood to 
cavil at Day’s definition, four hours later, as he sat 
in a corner talking to Sidney and to Sidney’s goddess, 
for the goddess impressed him as being a girl of far 
too much character to take pleasure in the process 
which Day expressively, albeit not too elegantly, had 
termed smirking. As downright and as free from 
self-absorption as Sidney herself, Irene Jessup was 
a girl on whom one might well bestow a smirk of 
genuine pleasure, so pretty was she, so full of dainty 
decision, of sound, sweet common sense, a girl who 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


76 


talked well and not too much, a girl who listened even 
better than she talked. Jack, consuming sandwiches 
and tea in his corner, felt himself moved to share 
Sidney’s mood of obvious content. 

To be sure, it was not alone the goddess who had 
produced this mood in Jack. Happy as he was in his 
work and in his home with the Argyles, he yet had 
missed Day intensely, missed her bright chatter, 
her loyalty, her quick comprehension of his thoughts 
and his unspoken wishes, missed, too, a certain cod- 
dling she had been wont to bestow upon him ever 
since, six months before, the overturning of a chafing 
dish and the resulting burns had threatened to result 
in a tragedy far worse than his scarred temple. There 
had been times, since college had swallowed up Day 
and Rob, that Jack had felt as if the larger, better 
half of himself had been lopped away. After 
two full months of loneliness, it had been good, so 
good, to tramp away with Day beside him, and have 
a long afternoon of their old-time confidential talk. 
The confidences had not been all upon the one 
side, either. Both had had much to tell, Jack of the 
routine of work in Mr. Argyle’s office where, bit by 
bit, the responsibilities were falling more heavily 
upon him, of his glimpses of social fun by way of the 
one or two close friends to whose care Day had 
entrusted him. And Day, on her side, went over 
in detail the past two months, from the hour when 
she had watched the Aurora slide away out of sight, 
up to the moment of her election, only the week before, 


76 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


went over it, narrating, explaining and demanding 
Jack's opinion and advice just as she had been wont 
to do of old. Jack had listened and sympathized 
and advised. Then, of a sudden, he had gone silent, 
so silent that Day asked him, — 

“ What is it that you're meditating, Jack? " 

And his keen brown eyes had softened, as he 
turned to smile at the tall girl tramping by his side. 

“ That college doesn't change you much. You're 
the same old Day, after all." 

And the contentment had lingered long upon him, 
and with it a relief. So many girls, under the same 
conditions, might have changed past all recognition. 
And Jack was not minded to welcome any change in 
Day Argyle. 

Later, his contentment deepened, while he sat in 
his corner, talking to Irene Jessup and studying 
Sidney Stay re. For Sidney, he could not give the 
verdict he had given Day. Sidney was changing, 
changing fast, and the change, Jack saw, was for the 
better. She was as frank as of yore, as downright, 
as quick in all her perceptions and as kindly. In those 
respects and in many more, she was the Sidney he 
had known and liked. In other respects, even the 
two short months had changed her; the friction with 
many other girls of her own kind and class was doing 
its swift work. She was gentler than of old, less self- 
assertive, less cocksure. The old aggressiveness which 
had been wont to show itself now and then, the aggres- 
siveness which is bound to come to the oldest one 



“ LATER, 


HIS CONTENTMENT DEEPENED, 
HIS CORNER.” 


WHILE 


HE SAT IN 

[Page 7G. 












. 

















*■' 






































































































- 


































• I 


























SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


77 


of seven children, had almost completely vanished. 
She was still the same old Sidney in poise and loyal 
kindness; but now the kindness was clothed with 
graciousness, the loyalty was not only for her chosen 
friends, but for the mere acquaintances who crossed 
her path. 

Glancing about the room, Jack felt he understood, 
in part, at least, the reason of the change. For Mrs. 
Leslie’s Sunday night suppers, the long dining-room 
was always abandoned, the electric lamps were 
switched off and, in the candlelit whiteness of the 
great living-room, the girls and their guests swarmed 
about the two tables where Day and Amy Pope were 
pouring tea. Everywhere, the room was full of pretty, 
fluffy girls, of the hum of gay talk, of occasional 
bursts of light laughter and fun, and everywhere was 
the same dominant note of intense refinement, from 
the poses of the dozen girls sitting on the floor in a 
corner up to dainty Mrs. Leslie in her trailing black 
gown and widow’s cap, moving quietly about the 
room in search of a few moments’ conversation with 
each and every guest. Leaving the girls, Jack’s eyes 
fixed themselves upon his gracious hostess, and, 
watching, he rejoiced that he too was Canadian and 
could claim himself her countryman. The influence of 
a gentlewoman such as that could never fail to count. 

But what about that odd, dark, stand-offish young 
daughter? 

“ I beg your pardon? ” He turned his face, apolo- 
getic for its inattention, to Irene Jessup. 


78 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ I was going to tell you you must not fail to come 
up for the big game, next spring/’ she said, as she 
rose. “ It is really one of our events, you know; and, 
besides, I think you will have a chance to see Miss 
Stay re do us all great honour.” 

“ You mean? ” he asked, as he, too, rose. 

“ That she is my favourite choice for captain of her 
team. Good night, Mr. Blanchard. I shall hope to 
see you cheering at the game.” And, with a gay 
little nod to Sidney, she crossed the room to say 
good-bye to Mrs. Leslie. 

“ Well, Jack? ” Day rose stiffly from her pen be- 
hind the table. “ Have you had a good time with 
the goddess? ” 

Jack laughed. 

“ Ask Sidney,” he said. 

But Sidney was too intent upon the echo of Irene’s 
unexpected words, still ringing in her ears, to hear 
Jack’s voice, or, hearing, heed. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


79 


CHAPTER SEVEN 

HONKING, as of a flight of many geese, cut 



across the crisp, sunshiny air, next morning. 
Day, snoozing still, pulled the blanket about her ears; 
but Sidney, up betimes in order to preempt a trio 
of seats in freshman rubber row, crossed to the 
window and peered out. 

“ How funny! ” she made soliloquy. “ Here is a 
perfectly enormous touring car just in front of the 
house, standing still and squawking like mad, and 
there doesn’t seem to be a thing in the way.” 

“ Wish ’twould go along! ” Day groaned sleepily. 
“ Throw something at it, Sidney; there’s a dear.” 

Sidney laughed unfeelingly. 

“ Get up, sleepy-head, and then you won’t mind,” 
she advised. “ It is really very strange. There’s only 
one man in it, and — Day, it’s Rob! ” The sentence 
ended in a strong crescendo. 

“ Nonsense! ” Day rolled over and buried her head 
between the pillows. 

“ It isn’t nonsense, either. It's Rob. He’s all cap 
and goggles; but I’d know that fur collar in Siberia. 
Day, do get up, and come and see.” 

Grumbling, Day yielded less to the persuasion than 
to Sidney’s remorseless grip upon the foot of the 
blankets. 


80 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Sidney, you wretch! I did want one bit more 
sleep. We talked till all hours about Jack, and I don't 
want to be too stupid, this morning, else he'll never 
care to come again. Oh, do be still, down there! " 
Day adjured the pitiless horn, as she huddled on a 
dressing-gown and crossed to the window. The next 
instant, the blind flew open with a bang, and Day's 
voice went up at least two octaves. “ Rob Argyle, 
you cherished vision! Where in the world did you 
drop from? " 

“ Good morrow, little stranger!" And a furtive 
creak of many blinds answered Rob's jovial hail. 
" Get up, and come have some breakfast." 

“ What are you doing there? " 

“ Starving," Rob said composedly, as he pocketed 
his goggles, rose up and stretched himself. 

“ What are you doing with that car? " 

“ Running it. At least, I was till I stopped." 

“ Can you? " 

“ Can I mote? Yes, of course. I moted through a 
whole flock of cows, on the road up from Springfield." 

“ Who taught you? " 

“ That's the sort of thing we learn at Harvard. 
I say, aren’t you ever coming down to let me in? " 

“ Sidney will. I must — " Day struggled with 
certain minor garments, while she spoke. Then once 
more she approached the window, albeit with caution. 
“ But, Rob, what are you doing here? " 

Rob stepped down to the pavement, took off his 
fur-lined coat and tossed it back into the car. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


81 


“ Visiting you, my hospitable young sister. Did 
you think I was going to let Jack have all the fun? 
Not on your life. I had an idea in chapel, yesterday 
morning, and I wired some things to Dad, among 
them the news that Jack wouldn’t be home till to- 
morrow. He wired back some more things. I came 
to Springfield, last night; and, this morning, I beat 
the lark out of bed by fifty-three minutes. How long 
does it take you girls to get on your duds? It’s time 
we were starting.” 

“ Starting where? ” 

“ Oh, any old place. We’ll make a day of it. 
Where’s Jack? ” 

“ At the Inn.” 

“ All right. I’ll go get him and, likewise, a little 
breakfast.” And, without more ado, Rob jumped 
back into the car, turned about and departed 
down the street, leaving a train of honks behind 
him. 

Left to themselves, the two girls dropped down 
on Sidney’s bed and faced each other. When their 
astonishment had subsided enough to leave room 
for words, — 

“ Ought we, Sidney? ” Day queried dubiously. 

Sidney laughed. 

“ I don’t know so much about the ought; but, 
according to Rob’s present mood, I rather imagine 
that we will.” 

Day rose. 

“ Where are you going? ” Sidney asked her. 


82 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ To talk it over with Mother Leslie/’ Day made 
answer. 

Mrs. Leslie answered Day’s question, not according 
to tradition, but by the dictates of her woman’s 
common sense. 

“ Go,” she said, when she had satisfied her mind 
upon a dozen points. “ Of course, you don’t want to 
do this sort of thing, every week; but, for the once, 
the day in the country will do you good. Rob is here 
with your father’s consent; it would be foolish to 
break up the plan. Besides, Day,” she laughed a 
little; “ I am under the impression that, if you gave 
up and stayed at home, with this thing in your mind, 
your work wouldn’t be especially valuable. Go down 
to chapel, child, and then start off. I’ll take the 
responsibility of it, for you and Sidney.” 

Nevertheless, outside the door of chapel, Rob 
balked, balked with an emphatic honk of protest 
which turned to him every face upon the crowded 
campus. 

“ This thing is too loose a fit for four,” he said. “ I 
chose it large on purpose. Where’s Janet? ” 

“ Down in the bulletin room, most likely.” As 
she spoke, Sidney settled her hat and tied her veil in 
a knot calculated to resist the worst November gale 
that ever blew. 

“ Have her out, then, and be quick,” Rob ordered. 
“ Tell her I’m in no end of a hurry, and can’t start 
till I’ve seen her.” 

Obediently, Sidney went skurrying around the 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


83 


corner of Seelye Hall, and Rob turned to Day who 
was preparing to join Jack in the rear seat. 

“ Who else? ” he demanded. 

Day reflected swiftly. 

“ For me, or for Sidney? ” 

“ Sidney, of course. You don’t count; you’re 
nothing but a sister.” 

“ Nothing but! I like that,” she protested. 

“ Glad you do. Now who? ” Rob urged poetically. 

“ Hm. Let’s see. What do you think, Jack? ” 

“ Miss Jessup,” he responded promptly. 

“ Get her,” Rob commanded. 

But Day was mocking at Jack. 

“ Love at first sight, Jack? ” she questioned. 

“ Not a bit of it,” he replied, as he stretched out 
his long legs and settled back into his corner. “ I 
thought she’d amuse Sidney and keep Rob quiet, so 
I could have time to play with you.” 

“ And Janet,” Day reminded him. “ You must be 
nice to her, Jack.” 

“ Perchance she may not be nice to me,” he sug- 
gested. 

“ She will, if you handle her right. All Janet needs 
is a little managing.” 

“ Janet is a good little fellow,” Rob interpolated, 
over his shoulder. “ Her husk is prickly, though.” 

“ Rather! ” Jack offered comment. 

Day looked up anxiously. 

“ How did you find out? ” 

“ I tried to talk to her, last night, cornered her. 


84 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


while you were busy and Sidney gone to see her idol 
off” 

“ What then? ” 

Jack laughed again. 

“ Janet could give Phyllis trumps and aces, and 
then take all the tricks,” he said. 

But Day still looked anxious. 

“ Oh, dear, I wish she wouldn’t!” she sighed. 
“ But be as nice to her as you can, Jack; there’s a 
dear.” Then, with a swift change of tone, “ Miss 
Jessup! Miss Jessup! Do wait for me just one minute 
till I can catch up with you,” she called, and, jumping 
from the car, she went running across the campus 
to intercept a brown-gowned figure just going up the 
steps of Seely e Hall. 

High noon found them far to the northward, camp- 
ing in a small pine grove beside the wide blue river 
which, winding down among the northern mountains, 
past dingy towns, over rocky falls and through wide 
and fertile meadows, at no one point loses its beauty 
or its look of peace. Behind them, the hills rose 
sharply, clothed with trees, bare for the most part, 
save for the oaks which still held their crowns of ruddy, 
russet leaves. Beyond lay the level meadows, 
checkerboarded with patches of whitening cornstalks 
and squares of dark earth fresh from the plow, and 
dotted with great black crows which flapped heavily 
to and fro, filling the air with their discordant shrieks. 

Seated in the shadow of the car, for the noonday 
sun was hot, Sidney and Irene Jessup were in full 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


85 


tide of talk concerning basket ball and kindred sub- 
jects dear to the tongue of each. Rob and Day, arm 
locked in arm, had strolled off down the sunny road, 
engaged in a futile endeavour by two hours of question 
and reply to make good two months of a separation 
which had worn upon them both, a separation for 
which no interchange of even daily letters could atone. 
Rather than that, the weeks since the parting had 
only served to make that parting more intolerable. 
The meeting of the brothers and sisters of their 
different classmates’ had merely gone to prove to Rob 
that there never was another Day, to Day that there 
could never be another Rob. And this one day 
together, like all other perfect things, was bound to 
be so very short. 

It was Jack who had sent them away together for 
the little gossip, Jack who, with the skill of the old 
campaigner, was busy packing up the ruins of the 
luncheon which Rob had produced from the great 
hamper in the rear. Janet, meanwhile, sat silent, 
watching him with intent and thoughtful eyes. 

By degrees, the very intentness of her gaze cut its 
way through his absorption in his task. He glanced 
up, a question in his eyes and in his smile. 

“ I was wondering how you learned to do that sort 
of thing so well,” Janet explained. 

His smile widened at her unconscious compliment. 

“ Not so well, considering the practice I have had,” 
he said. 

“ When was that? ” 


86 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Six years ago, in Natal, and back of there.” 

The steady intentness of her face warmed into 
sudden life. 

“ You were in South Africa? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ With the Contingents? ” 

“ Yes.” 

Janet’s hands shut on each other, tight, hard. 

“ And fought? ” 

He nodded. 

Janet’s face blazed into sudden feeling. 

“ I wish I’d been a man! ” she burst out. “ It was 
such a chance to show the way one felt.” 

He nodded again, this time more gravely. 

“ Yes,” he said. “ I found it so. I left Queen’s, 
for the sake of going, left it never to go back there; 
but I wasn’t sorry.” 

Janet raised her head. 

“No man would be,” she said, with a quietness 
which yet was throbbing with her pride. “ Tell me, 
were you ever shot? ” 

“ Once, in my leg. It was nothing serious; but 
it laid me up for a few weeks. The worst of it was, 
it knocked me out of being in the trenches at Paarde- 
berg.” 

“ Yes,” she assented, with a swiftness of compre- 
hension which surprised him; “ that must have been 
the worst. But I wonder why Day never told me.” 

Jack looked up quickly. 

“ I have begged Day not to tell,” he said. “ As 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


87 


a rule, I don’t care to hear it talked about. People 
don’t understand, down here, how we felt about the 
thing, and I hate to hear them discuss it. In fact,” 
he laughed a little shamefacedly: I don’t know 
why I told you.” 

“ Because I asked you, I suppose,” she answered, 
with that same quiet gravity which already he had 
found so winning. “ I am glad you did; and I think 
I understand. I was only a little child at the time; 
but I remember the students hissing in the streets, 
remember the day the men went away. My father 
took Ronald and me to see them marching to the pier, 
and, while we waited, he tried to make us understand 
what it was all about. His brother went, and died 
out there, died fighting.” She paused, with an odd 
little smile. “ Do you know, now, sitting here, I can 
feel the beat of the drums in my ears, just as I did 
then. I believe I shall hear them always, see the men, 
till I am dead. One doesn’t forget such things.” 

“ No,” Jack said; “ one doesn’t.” Then, after an 
interval, he added, “ And one doesn’t often find a 
Canadian down here.” 

“ No,” she assented drearily; “ one doesn’t.” 

The sudden fall of her voice smote sadly on Jack’s 
ears. Nevertheless, he ignored it, and asked her 
cheerily, as once more he attacked the pile of plates, 
forgotten in their graver talk, — 

“ How did you ever happen to stray down here, 
Miss Leslie? ” 

Her reply was enigmatic. 


88 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ For the same reason that took you to South 
Africa.” 

“ And that? ” 

“ Love of Canada,” she returned swiftly. 

“ How do you mean? ” No wonder Jack looked 
puzzled. 

Janet laughed a little, and the laugh broke down 
the last of her reserve. 

“ I’m as loyal as you are,” she told him; “ but 
I am a girl and can’t fight, couldn’t fight, even if 
there were a war now. Neither would I go as a nurse; 
it’s too messy, and, besides, every girl does that. 
All I can do is to start out for myself and make a 
record in some other way.” 

“ Well? ” Jack urged, after the silence had lasted 
long. 

With a hasty glance over her shoulder, Janet assured 
herself that Sidney and Irene were wholly engrossed 
in their talk. Then she lowered her voice. 

“It is a good deal as it is about « your being in 
South Africa,” she said. “One hates to talk about it 
to people, as a rule; then, all at once, one finds an 
exception.” Again came the swift lighting and 
gentling of her intent, dark little face. “ You see, 
they tell me I have a knack of writing things, not 
stories and such stuff, but things that are really true 
and happened. And, all his life, my father had been 
getting together all sorts of things about the fight at- 
home, letters and old, pale-inky journals and queer 
old pictures. They say his collection is famous. He 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


89 


never meant to write it together, himself; but he 
used to show it to Ronald and me, and tell us how 
he hoped that Ronald would use it all, some day, 
and make the Leslies proud of him, and Canada, too.” 

“ Well? ” Jack said again, after another silence. 

Janet roused herself. 

“ Well, Ronald won’t. He cares for other things, 
is doing other work, outside of Canada. And so 
the chance is handed on to me,” she explained 
slowly. 

“ And that was what brought you here? ” he asked. 

To his surprise, she faced him sharply. 

" I’m not disloyal in it,” she protested. “ Canada 
is my country and the best of all; but that is no sign 
that it is best in every way. In spite of Quebec, we 
are young; our colleges for girls can’t compare with 
this, and I was bound I would have the best, or none. 
Besides that, I’d get a broader view of things, if I 
went a little farther off to look at them. So I came 
down here. It wasn’t easy.” She faced him bravely, 
as she went on with her frank explanation. “ We 
haven’t as much money as we used to have, not nearly 
so much. I’ve had to earn and scrimp and save. 
Even then, I couldn’t have come, if it hadn’t been for 
my mother. But perhaps you have a mother, your- 
self? ” 

Jack bowed his head. 

“ Yes,” he said reverently. “ Yes, I have.” 

“ Then you know all about it; we can leave that 
out. Only, after all, when people see my mother, 


90 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


pretty and bright and brave, I do just wish they knew 
what she was giving up, what she wasn’t having of 
the things she always has been used to. That’s one 
of the things that hurt.” 

“ And another? ” Jack asked her, after a little 
pause. 

Janet turned scarlet. Then, to her intense morti- 
fication, she gulped down a sob. 

“ The not belonging here,” she answered briefly. 

“ You find it so? ” 

“ Yes. Didn’t you? ” Her voice showed how she 
was clinging to the hope of his having shared her own 
experience, shared it and come out dominant. 

“ No; not even for an hour,” he told her. “ Still, 
I had Day and Hob.” 

“ And so have I; or Day, at least. Mother enjoys 
her; but I don’t.” 

“ I don’t see why.” Jack spoke thoughtlessly, 
full of his own reflections on what seemed to him a 
knotty point. 

“ I don’t, myself,” Janet made honest answer. “ In 
Quebec, all the last of the time she was there, we were 
the best sort of friends, and I always adored Rob, 
even when we fought. I had supposed that, when I 
came down here, we should go on just where we left 
off. Instead, I can’t seem to get at Day at all; she 
shuts me up like an oyster, shuts me up tighter and 
tighter the more I know she is trying to be nice to me. 
Rob doesn’t seem the same at all; I feel as if he were 
a total stranger. I don’t know why it is; but, among 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


91 


their friends and their own people, they seem so much 
more American; I feel so much more Canadian. I 
wish I could make you understand just what I mean/’ 
she ended, with a desperate little laugh. 

“ I think perhaps I do,” Jack answered simply. 

Janet faced him, elbows on knees, chin on her fists. 
Beneath her wide black hat, her eyes looked dark 
and lustrous, her cheeks were flushed pink with her 
excitement in her own confession. 

“ Then what ought I to do? ” she demanded. 

“ Wait,” Jack advised her gently. “ Things will 
get right in time; they always do. Meanwhile, just 
remember that I'm Canadian, too, and that I can 
understand.” 

“ Understand what? ” Rob queried, as he dropped 
down at Jack's side. “ You evidently do not under- 
stand packing up those plates. Man alive, you've 
been dawdling here for an hour and a half ; it's past 
three, and it gets dark by half-past five, to say nothing 
of the fact that Mother Leslie has asked us both to 
dinner. Here, Janet, give us a hand with these plates 
and knives and things. We must be starting back.” 
And, with a clatter of dishes and a chatter of tongues, 
the hamper was packed up once more, the girls were 
bundled into the car and, with a warning honk or 
two, Rob set his face towards home. 

There was no chance for quiet conversation, during 
that afternoon spin down the sunny, peaceful valley. 
Laughter and jokes and reminiscences galore flew 
back and forth between the seats, until Jack forgot 


92 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


his years and Irene her junior dignity, and both 
turned to freshmen with the rest. 

The car slid under the arching elm trees of the 
ancient street, rushed down across the campus to leave 
Irene at her door and then came to a halt outside the 
Leslie house. Jack sprang to the ground and handed 
out the girls, Day first, then Sidney. Last of all came 
Janet and, as she came, she shut her hand tight on 
Jack's strong fingers with the confiding grip of a little 
child who clings to the hand which she trusts to pro- 
tect her in the dark. 

“ Thank you," she said quite low. “ I sha’n’t 
forget." 

And, as the car went speeding towards the Inn, 
Janet stood gazing after it, sure that, under all the 
arching elms of the aged town, not another soul under- 
stood her half so well as did Jack Blanchard. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


93 


CHAPTER EIGHT 

F OLLOWING the threefold excitement of elec- 
tion, of Jack’s visit and of Rob’s headlong 
descent upon them, an epoch of flat calm fell upon the 
girls. November was always a short month, broken 
as it was by the Thanksgiving recess at the end. 
Nevertheless, it seemed to be the first month when 
the freshman class had swung into its normal stride, 
ready to take up its march throughout the year. The 
little of September which had remained to them on 
their arrival had been a season of unpacking, of getting 
settled, of learning the names of unfamiliar things 
and people. October, beginning with the Freshman 
Frolic which was supposed to be by way of welcome 
to the new-come class, had passed from that to 
Mountain Day when everybody was supposed to take 
to the woods and be happy, followed by a succession 
of mountain days which, impromptu and lacking 
all capitalization, were so much the more enjoyable 
on that account, days when people who were supposed 
to stay at home and study really did take to the woods 
and revel in the glory of the dropping leaves. 

Then the leaves had dropped, the days had short- 
ened, and the outer world had lost somewhat of its 
lure. And, in proportion as the call of the wild grew 


94 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


lower, less insistent, the lure and charm of the college 
grew apace. It was as if, the neighbourhood once 
explored, its resources made familiar to the point of 
boredom, the college world sat down by its own fire- 
side and prepared to enjoy itself at home. 

For the most part, it did enjoy itself, too. Of course, 
in every class there are bound to be girls who are 
constantly athirst for new sensations, new excite- 
ment, girls for whom the day’s lawful routine counts 
as mere boredom. Happily, however, girls like that 
are few, and those few are so out of fashion as to be 
of small account in the large college life that goes on 
around them. To many and many of the girls, the 
mere life of the place, organized, diverse and full of 
change and motion as any old-fashioned kaleidoscope, 
suffices for weeks on end. Classes and athletics, 
walks and drives, teas in the rooms and at the Allen 
Field, chafing-dish suppers and occasional trips to 
Boyden’s, these, with the college societies, the house 
plays, and the endless interchange of girlish hospi- 
tality make up an existence which, albeit simple, 
is yet the very reverse of monotonous or narrow. The 
outside girl may win a greater poise, a surer manner 
than her sister of the college; yet what she gains in 
manner, she loses in her knowledge of her kind. Few 
calling lists of women show such number or variety 
of type as does the catalogue of one Smith College 
class. It is no small study in adjustment to meet the 
requirements such a class is bound to make of even its 
least prominent member. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


95 


And so the three girls were finding out, as the days 
sped by and, little by little, their lives were focus- 
sing themselves more closely upon college concerns. 
Each of the three, moreover, was finding it out in 
her own way, a way which neither of the others 
could understand or compass. Day, alternating her 
struggles with Rules of Order and a belated essay, 
was absorbing things unconsciously just then. She 
was always the sort of girl to be more busy living, 
than watching to see how she did it; and never more 
so than now, when each day was so full of simple, 
straightforward duty that there never seemed to be 
any especial reason for stopping to decide what next. 
Sidney’s one cause for stopping lay in an occasional 
need for meditation as to whether she could crowd 
more into the space of a single day. She too was not 
given to self-analysis; she too regarded her ideal 
method of life as consisting of the next things taken 
one at a time. However, in a life where there were 
so many agreeable next things, her great desire was 
to attempt them all. Sidney Stayre’s danger, just 
then, was of becoming a bit of a glutton. Her con- 
sequent fits of indigestion, however, would be lessened 
by the fact that her tastes were entirely for the 
wholesome things. j 

Janet Leslie, meanwhile, was doing her level best 
to make up for what she considered a grievous lack 
of strenuousness on the part of Day and Sidney. 
Partly by race, partly by temperament, in part by 
reason of the stringent circumstances of the past two 


96 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


years, Janet Leslie took herself tremendously in 
earnest. Taking herself so, it was a natural result 
that she took college in earnest, too. For the matter 
of fact, so do many girls; but those who flaunt their 
earnestness as a banner are rarely those who win the 
liking of their mates. Janet was a bit archaic. 
Nowadays, the most serious girls seek to cloak their 
seriousness beneath a veil of frivolity. Janet, from 
the first day, had made no secret of the discouraging 
fact that she had entered Smith for work and for 
work alone; that the lighter routine of college life, 
that the very girls themselves mattered nothing to her, 
save as incidental and indispensable adjuncts of the 
main establishment. Accordingly, the girls who at 
first had been ready to accord her the friendliness 
which one shows to any untried acquaintance, who 
later would have liked her for her mother’s sake, left 
her to go her studious way. If she so plainly showed 
that she had no place for them in her interests, they 
would leave her to herself and go in search of more 
responsive mates. And Janet, gently shunted to one 
side, told herself she did not care. Fewer friends 
meant fewer distractions in her work, and work was, 
after all, that for which she had come there. Of 
course, she could not work, all the time; in the inter- 
vals, she could gain both interest and profit by stand- 
ing back and watching the vast social machine sweep 
along its course. She took no heed of the fact that 
the closest study of the wheels is forbidden to the one 
who stands outside the engine room, that the engineer 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


97 


himself is the one best knowing all that his machine 
can do. 

And now, in mid-November, even the most casual 
onlooker was aware that the machine was going at a 
steady pace, cog catching into cog, well-adjusted, 
well-oiled, full of the sort of power which does its 
work and makes no outward sign of friction. The 
long vacation had drifted so far to the past as to leave 
no ripple on the smooth succession of days; it was 
still so recent that somewhat of its freshening yet 
remained. 

Outwardly the college was putting on its winter 
dress. Over the buildings the vines had turned 
scarlet, turned brown, then shown themselves, a net- 
work of bare and wrinkled stems. The great lawns 
were dulling from their mid-summer green; now 
and then at dawn they showed a thin little blanket 
of snow which vanished speedily before the rising sun. 
The trees about the town were baring, too, and the 
twin little mountains at the southward lost their 
greenery and stood out, blue, against the dull Novem- 
ber sky. The dreary season was upon the rest of the 
world; but the Northampton streets, echoing from 
dawn to dusk and after with the heel-clicks and care- 
less voices of a thousand jovial girls, are capable of 
throwing a defiant glance even at the dreary season. 

Not all the girls were jovial, however, one night 
in mid-November. Irene Jessup was in the dumps, 
a fact so rare in her experience that Sidney, halting 
on the threshold, caught her breath in astonishment 


98 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


at the unwonted sight of Irene in something danger- 
ously akin to tears. 

During the past three weeks, Sidney had become 
quite familiar with the path to Irene’s room. She 
only needed to go in across the back campus, past the 
yellow Haven House, and the Chapin, and the Wal- 
lace, on across the middle campus and then turn 
down the right-hand path. Inside the house, it was 
up one flight, a sharp turn to the right, to the right 
again, and then a knock on Irene’s door which, to 
Sidney’s mind, led the way into a room all window 
seat and sunshine and boisterous welcome, or else 
all firelight which played among the pictures and 
danced over the gay little table where the chafing 
dish stood ready among its pale green dishes, waiting 
its turn to come after the long, idle talk. And the 
talk, by now, had ranged over all things on earth, 
and in Smith College which, in Sidney’s creed, was 
synonymous with heaven. The two girls, strange to 
say, had overleaped the gap of class, of previous life 
and training. Little by little, they were becoming 
friends, close, loyal, and singularly free from senti- 
mental ways. Rob Argyle’s love for Jack Blanchard, 
a love which had started almost from their first meet- 
ing, was no more free from dregs of misplaced senti- 
ment than was the liking that was springing up be- 
tween Sidney Stayre and Irene Jessup. The unwhole- 
some maunderings which too often pose as college 
friendship would have been quite as repugnant to 
one downright girl as to the other. And the test lay 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


in one fact, small, but significant to those who 
looked on. Neither girl sought or cared to be 
alone or even first, in the other’s love. Sidney 
made not the slightest secret of her own pref- 
erence for Day Argyle; she made not the slightest 
effort to rank herself in any sense the equal of Irene’s 
other, older friends, the girls of her own class. 

Now, as she halted on the threshold of the pretty 
room, all green and dark brown oak, she was astounded 
to find Irene in a perfect fog of melancholy, a fog 
so thick as to render the wet night outside a blaze 
of moonshine by comparison. 

“ I-rene Jes-sup! ”• she said blankly. 

Irene dabbed at her eyes with one hand, while she 
waved a welcome with the other. 

“ Not guilty ! ” she said, with suspicious promptness. 

Sidney came forward, umbrella and all, and 
plumped herself down on the arm of Irene’s chair. 

“ Don’t deny till you are asked,” she said, with a 
cheery composure which belied the sympathy in her 
eyes; “ and don’t deny at all, when you’re sure to get 
found out. Your nose is red, Irene, scandalously red, 
and your voice is froggy. What is it all about? ” 

In spite of her melancholy, Irene laughed. 

“ Sidney, you’re a Sherlock Holmes, even if your 
phrases aren’t properly pitiful. I am a mass of woe; 
that’s all.” 

“ You poor old dud! ” Sidney settled herself, as 
for a longer stay upon the chair-arm. “ I’m so sorry. 
What’s the matter? ” 


100 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Everything/’ Irene answered comprehensively, 
as she made another dab at her eyes which were 
suspiciously bright. “ I thought it was the weather; 
that would have been enough to account for most 
things, and I rejoiced that I, mere basket ball en- 
thusiast, was developing a temperament which 
would have done credit to a Monthly poet. Then, 
on my way up-stairs, I stepped the hem all out of my 
new brown skirt, and that made me cross, viciously 
cross, so cross I decided I wouldn’t have a tempera- 
ment, if I could get it. No; don’t laugh. That is 
only the preface. They say bad things always come 
in threes, and the last is very bad.” Irene’s voice 
broke a little, and she stopped to let it steady itself 
again. 

“ What is it, Irene? ” Sidney asked. “ I’m sorry, 
you know, whatever it is; but I wish you felt like 
telling. Is it a warning, or a fight? ” 

“Warning!” Irene echoed scornfully. “You 
don’t suppose I’d sit and wail over a thing like that; 
do you? Or even a fight? I’d stiffen my back and 
work it off. No; this is worse, things at home, the 
sort of things one can’t help at all. My small sister 
has been getting herself a throat, and the whole 
family are starting off to California, as fast as they 
can get their trunks packed.” 

Sidney sat up and considered the pattern of the 
rug. Then, — 

“ Honestly, Irene, I don’t know what to say. Is 
it very bad? ” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


101 


Irene shook her head. 

“ There’s no telling what it will be. It’s not so bad 
yet, and there’s a special cause, a horrid little wretch 
of a roommate at school who was too selfish to tell 
that her whole family were alive with the germs.” 
In her fervour, Irene spoke as if the aforesaid germs 
were reptilian in their habits. “ They have taken 
it in time, they think; they’re going to go to the 
mountains and camp there, all winter long, mother 
and all. By spring, the doctor says the danger should 
be nearly over; but she isn’t very strong, and one 
never really knows.” 

Gently Sidney patted her friend’s back. It was 
an unconventional sort of caress; but it answered 
its purpose just as well. 

“ I wouldn’t worry too much, Irene,” she said hope- 
fully at length. “ Those things are horrid, while they 
last; they seem to take the strength out of one’s very 
knees. Still, they can be cured. I know what I am 
talking about, too, for I have a cousin at home who 
went through it all, three years ago. I was with him, 
all that summer. If absolute fear could have killed 
a man, it would have made an end of him. All the 
first part of the time, he was so determined he was 
going to die that he couldn’t waste any attention on 
the way to get himself well.” 

“ And did he? ” Irene asked eagerly. 

Sidney laughed, while she continued her pattings. 

“ Didn’t I tell you I had him at home? He’s as 
tough as a pine knot now. He came out in good con- 


102 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


dition, and he hasn’t had a bit of trouble since. I do 
wish you could see him, and hear him talk.” Sidney 
paused abruptly, as a sudden idea flashed across her 
brain. 

“ Bring him up here,” Irene suggested absently, 
her eyes on the rug and her sudden eagerness all fled. 

“ I will, some fine day. He has promised,” Sidney 
made answer quite as absently. Then, audaciously 
turning Irene’s head about until their eyes could 
meet, she asked, “ Irene, tell me honestly, do juniors 
ever accept invitations from just freshmen? ” 

Again despite herself, Irene laughed. 

“ That depends on whether they get any,” she 
answered. 

“ No; but truly? ” 

“ Of course, child, yes.” 

“ For anything but Boyden’s and things like that? ” 
Sidney persisted. 

“ Yes.” 

Sidney abandoned that point and assailed another. 

“ When do your people go? ” 

“ Next Monday morning. At least, they start 
then.” 

So soon as that? No wonder you’re feeling blue,” 
Sidney said consolingly. 

“ Blue as indigo. Nobody knows when I’ll see 
any of them again,” Irene burst out tragically. 

“ What shall you do, Thanksgiving? ” 

“ Stay here and riot with the other homeless 
orphans. Really, Sidney, that’s where I feel sorriest 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


103 


for myself. Thanksgiving is always our great day 
at home, and now there won't be any home to go to." 

“ Come home with me, instead." 

“ How I'd love it!" Irene said, with the fervour 
that one dares bestow upon an utter impossibility. 

“ Come on, then. I mean it." Sidney gasped a 
little at her own temerity. 

“ But I mustn't," Irene protested. 

Sidney flushed. 

“ Why not? " she asked bluntly. “ Because I'm 
nothing but a freshman? " 

“ What nonsense, child ! " 

“ Then why not come? " 

“ Because it's not decent to accept a seventh-hour 
invitation that one has almost begged." 

“ But you haven't. I had to screw up all my 
courage to offer it to you, in the first place. Do 
come, Irene," Sidney urged, while her gray eyes 
seconded the bidding which even now halted a little 
upon her tongue. It would be so very good to show 
Irene to the dear home people. 

Irene hesitated. 

“ What would your mother say? " she suggested. 

Sidney's laugh echoed through the room. 

“ She probably would say 1 How do you do, Miss 
Jessup? I am glad to see you,' " she answered. 
“ At least, that is her Usual form of salutation." 

“ But to my rushing in upon your Thanksgiving 
plans? " 

Sidney laughed again. 


104 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ When I came away from home,” she answered; 
“ my mother told me, when I came home for Thanks- 
giving, to be sure to bring the homesickest, forlornest 
thing I could find. I rather think you’re It, Irene.” 

Turning, Irene laid her hand on Sidney’s fingers 
where they still rested on the handle of her brown 
umbrella. 

“ Thank you,” she said. “ I’ll come.” 

Sidney rose. 

“ Good. Then I’ll send a note to mother now, and 
tell her to kill the fatted calf. You’ll find a royal 
welcome, Irene, for they’ve heard all about you; 
but you won’t find much pomp and circumstance 
about the house. We just have a good time there; 
that’s all. The place is filled with a whole lot of us, 
in all the different stages of getting grown up; and 
then, there’s Wade Winthrop. He is my cousin and 
a darling, and born to better things; but I tell him 
he is the most loyal Stayre of the whole flight, or else 
the newel post that we all build on. I want you to 
know him well.” And, nodding her farewells, Sidney 
went her way, in peaceful unconsciousness of the 
extent to which her final words were altering the 
course of coming Fate. 

In her room, she found Day arguing with Janet. 

“ Rob wants you, too, Janet,” Day was saying. 
“ I truly think you might.” 

“ Might what? ” Sidney demanded, as she cast 
aside her umbrella, then her coat. 

Might come home to spend Thanksgiving at our 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


105 


house. We want Mother Leslie, too; but she can’t 
come. I can see she’s needed here. But Janet — ” 

“ Isn’t needed? Thank you.” 

“ Don’t be cranky, Janet. Take the goods the 
gods offer,” Sidney counselled her, as she hunted for 
her pen. 

“ I will, when I’m sure they are good,” Janet an- 
swered. 

“ Polite to Day! ” 

“ What? That I’m not sure how good it is to leave 
my mother? ” 

Day sought a new argument. 

“ And, after all, it’s not as if it were a festival 
of yours, Janet. This is our day, pure and simple.” 

“ Perhaps. Still, Canadians can be thankful now 
and then, given the reason,” Janet retorted. 

Sidney looked up. 

“ Oh, come now, Janet,” she urged impartially; 
“ we are sure to have a great time, all of us, and Rob, 
and now Irene is going home with me, too.” 

“ Irene? ” Day looked up. 

“ Yes. She has promised.” And briefly Sidney 
explained. 

When she had ended her explanation, Day turned 
to Janet, and her tone was pleading, as if she sought 
to ask a favour, not to bestow one. 

“ Really, Janet, won’t you come? It would be 
so much nicer for us all, if we could have you. And 
Rob is counting on it.” 

But Janet shook her head. 


106 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Thank you,” she said curtly; “ but I can’t go.” 
Nevertheless, she cried herself to sleep, that night. 
Renunciation might be the debt she owed to her 
mother and to her fancied dignity; but, under some 
conditions, renunciation was not easy. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


107 


CHAPTER NINE 


“ Of thy care forgetful never, 

Bound by ties that naught can sever, 

Still to thee returning ever, 

Alma Mater! ” 

H IGH and clear rang the girlish voices, singing 
for the last time in the dying year the praises of 
their Alma Mater, praises richly deserved and freely, 
fondly given. 

It was the last Saturday before Christmas, and 
Assembly Hall was packed to listen to the Christmas 
concert of the glee and banjo clubs. Outside, the 
world was putting on its Christmas dress, a soft white 
blanket suit of snow. The campus was covered, and 
the streets, and the meadows beyond the town, 
and still the great, soft flakes came sifting softly 
down through the still gray air, blurring the nearer 
landscape and completely cutting out the profiles 
of the mountains which, for the past three days, had 
stood up, sharp and blue, the harbingers of coming 
storm. 

The lights were blazing gayly inside the hall. 
For the hour, it looked a festal place, rather than the 
austerer chapel which was its more wonted guise. 
The great organ was half hidden in its Christmas 


108 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


wreaths which hung from the choir gallery above 
to meet the palms that rose from the platform below. 
And between the palms were grouped the mem- 
bers of the clubs, dressed in the fluffy white things 
in which the daughter of Smith delights to array 
herself upon all occasions. And the hall itself was 
packed, floor and gallery, transept and rubber row, 
packed with students in gala dress and with an 
occasional guest who, for the most part, had dropped 
in there for a week end spent on the way to somewhere 
else. 

It was not a critical audience, but friendly, rather, 
gathered there with a loyal determination to have a 
good time at any cost. At least, such was the only 
theory on which one could account for the applause 
that burst out at the end of every number, wholly 
irrespective of its merits, burst out just as lustily 
when the leader of the combined clubs dropped her 
baton and it clattered from the platform to the floor, 
as when the star soloist had finished her chief est and 
most successful effort. 

“ Good for ’em! It encourages them to go ahead; 
and, besides, they deserve all that’s coming their 
way,” was the verdict of one yellow-headed youth 
down in the front row, while he pounded out a salvo 
which wellnigh blistered even his athletics-hardened 
palms. 

His companion, less pretty than many of her mates, 
but by far the daintiest girl in sight, nodded her 
approval. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


109 


“ Then you do like it? You think it was worth 
stopping over for? ” she questioned. 

“ Like it! It’s a spectacle to bring tears to the 
eyes of a hardened misogynist. I wouldn't have 
missed it for worlds. It's my first sight of the girls 
in their Sunday best, and, by Jove, it beats Appleton 
Chapel to shreds and tatters. I'm going back to put 
our fellows into frilly white pajamas. Who's the 
Venus on the end of the second row, Day, the tall, 
dark one with eyes like a Jersey calf? " 

“ Rob ! How can you? " Day protested, though she 
was forced to laugh a little at the aptness of the 
description. “ That’s my latest goddess." 

“ Oh, I see." Rob nodded sagely, for he had 
conned Day's letters with heedful attention. “ Venus 
the Twenty-Ninth, in other words. Where are the 
other twenty-eight? Were they as much so? " 

“Hush!" Day besought him. 

“ What for should I hush? This is intermission, 
made to let the children have a chance to talk. 
I want to talk, Day; I want to know Miss Venus' 
other name." 

“ You don't need to. Venus will do for all practical 
purposes," Day assured him. “ It is descriptive 
and quite impersonal, the best thing in the world for 
such a place as this." 

Rob rolled his programme into a telescope and 
brought it to bear upon the stage before him. 

“Impersonal! I should rather say it was. By 
actual count, you have averaged a Venus and a 


110 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


half a week, Day, since you came. Why can’t you 
stick to one goddess, as Sidney does? ” 

“ One would get monotonous, also conceited, if I 
focussed all my interest on her. What in the world 
are you doing, Rob? ” 

“ Reinforcing my myopic vision with a spyglass,” 
he returned tranquilly. “ In fact, it’s a regular 
game of I spy . Your Venus has a wrinkle beside 
her nose, Day. That means bad temper. Drop 
her.” 

“ By the way,” Day said suddenly, yielding to an 
unspoken and unspeakable connection of ideas; 
“ did you see Janet? ” 

“ Not till we were inside here. That is the worst 
of you, Day. You are so anxious I should perform 
all the social functions that are going, that you won’t 
let me have any fun.” 

“ Don’t you like this? ” Day asked severely. 

“ Like mice. It’s no end of a nice little party. 
Still,” Rob’s blue eyes grew sombre; “ for a fact, 
Day, this afternoon, I’d rather have had a good old 
talk with Janet.” 

“ But Janet is here,” Day reminded him, with an 
explanatory glance towards the back gallery. 

“ Yes; but she wouldn’t have been, if I’d had my 
way. I hate losing touch with Janet, as I’m doing. 
She was a good little fellow in Quebec; good, that is, 
when she wasn’t in a row.” 

Day’s voice was as thoughtful as Rob’s own had 
become. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


111 


“ That seems to be the trouble here/’ she assented, 
“ She’s in a chronic row.” 

“ Who’s the victim? ” But Rob’s face belied the 
frivolity of his words. 

“ The whole establishment.” 

“ You mean all the girls? ” 

“ Not so much the girls, as things in general. She 
doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere.” 

Rob shook his head. 

“ The larger the college where we are, the more 
we have to work to fit ourselves into some crack,” 
he said oracularly. “ Janet Leslie is singularly 
well adapted to be an only child. In her own house 
and let alone, she can be all right. In a mob like this, 
she is constantly knocking her angles into other 
people, and then blaming them for the collision.” 

“ What will be the end of it? ” Day asked a little 
drearily. 

Rob’s answer was characteristically optimistic. 

“ In time, by very force of bumping them, she will 
wear off her own angles, or grind them down.” 

“ Meanwhile,” Day said; “ she’s having a bad time 
of it.” 

“ Trust Janet for that, when things don’t go her 
way,” Rob agreed. “ I never saw anybody suffer 
such pangs over her own perversity. What’s hap- 
pening to her? ” 

“ Total ignoring. She is making a fine record in her 
work. People admire her; but they don’t seem to 
like her much. As for the girls in the house, she has 


112 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


snubbed them so often that now they let her go her 
way in peace, except when they meet her in Mother 
Leslie’s room, or at Mother Leslie’s end of the table. 
Rob, that woman is a darling.” 

“ Of course.” Rob waved aside the subject of Mrs. 
Leslie and returned to that involved in Janet. 
“ Hasn’t she any points of human contact? ” 

“ Mrs. Leslie? ” 

“ Janet? ” 

“ How do you mean? ” 

“ Any fads, hobbies, any hankerings for the things 
the other girls are doing.” 

Day’s answer came despairingly. 

“ Rob, how should I know? ” she said. 

Rob whistled softly, under cover of the buzz of 
talk around them. 

“ You bet I’d know, if I had to take a gimlet and 
grind it out of her! That way would mean Janet’s 
salvation, Day; and she’s got to be saved. It’s an 
awful fate, the going through college on a single- 
track, narrow-gauge road; we’ve got, between us, to 
haul her over to the main line and give her a punch 
to set her going.” 

Day’s eyes were on the programme in her lap. 

“ I’ve tried, Rob; truly, I have,” she said. 

Under the shelter of her fluffy coat which lay be- 
tween them, Rob’s fingers sought her hand. 

“ I know you have, Day,” he said quickly. “ I 
know your way of doing things. Moreover, I’ve 
seen some things for myself, and Jack has told me 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


113 


some more. Still, Day, I trust Jack’s judgment 
more than I do the whole board of Harvard Overseers, 
and he declares that Janet is worth the fussing with. 
Shut up inside her, she’s got good stuff. It’s up to 
us to get it out.” 

“ How are you going to do it? ” Day inquired, and 
again the inquiry was full of weary discouragement. 

“ I don’t know. I’ve got to get inside her shell, 
first of all. That’s why I wanted her to come down 
for Thanksgiving. Of course, she is coming down, 
next week; but her mother will be with her then, and 
Janet never has so much to say to us, when Mrs. 
Leslie is about. It’s as if she realized the difference 
between them, and distrusted herself on that account. 
Ronald was that same stiff sort.” 

“ I liked Ronald,” Day said defensively. 

“ I respected him,” Rob forced untold meaning 
into his brief phrase, and the meaning was not wholly 
complimentary to the absent Ronald; “ but I 
couldn’t get on with him a little bit. After our divers 
fashions, I did get on with Janet. At least, she 
wasn’t monotonous.” 

Day sighed. 

“ She’s monotonous enough here.” 

“ Evidently. That’s what we must go to work to 
break up. Does she hate it here as badly as she did? ” 

Day laughed. 

“ I’m not encouraging conversation on that theme,” 
she made expressive answer. 

“ Better not. Let sleeping dogs snore. There is 


114 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


no especial sense in pulling their tails to make them 
bark. Where’s Sidney? ” 

“ Over in the south transept gallery with Irene.” 

Rob nodded in manifest approbation. 

“ There’s a girl! ” he observed. 

“ Which? ” 

“ Irene, of course. As far as Sidney is concerned, 
it isn’t necessary to comment upon the wholly 
obvious.” 

“ After all, they are a good deal alike,” Day said. 

But Rob demurred. 

“ There’ll never be another Sidney,” he answered, 
just as the glee club rose to end the intermission. 

Nevertheless, granted that Sidney was unique, 
Rob was ready to bestow upon Irene a good measure 
of the same sort of liking which he had long since 
accorded to his older friend. Irene’s forty-eight 
hours in New York had sufficed to put her on a most 
cordial footing in both the Stayre and Argyle homes. 
The short vacation had been spent rather indiscrim- 
inately between the two houses. The first evening, 
Wade and Sidney and Irene had been invited to the 
Argyles’ for a most informal dinner. The second 
night, as soon as the Thanksgiving dinner was ended, 
the four Argyles and Jack had appeared, uninvited, 
at the Stayre front door, demanding the welcome 
which never failed to be found within. And, through 
it all, Irene had been so blithe, so witty, so adaptable 
that Sidney, looking on, had wellnigh burst with 
pride in this, her newest friend. As time went on, 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


115 


Irene would prove no mere substitute for Day. 
She was fast winning her own place, lower than that 
of Day, but none the less secure on that account. 

However, in looking back upon their short holiday, , 
it was not upon the memory of their merrymakings 
that Sidney loved best to linger. Given a frolic, 
Irene was always in its midst, hearty, happy, yet 
never strident in her mirth. But it was in her quiet 
hours that Sidney found her most full of charm 
and helpfulness, most sane and sweet in all her point 
of view. It was not in the evening revels, then, 
that Sidney had enjoyed her visit most; but rather 
in one long hour, Thanksgiving morning, when she 
and Irene and Wade Winthrop had sat before a 
crackling fire in the shabby, cosy library, and had 
talked of many things. Wade was an older man, 
more quiet, as was natural for one who had faced his 
own bad times. His chosen profession had been 
broken up, just as it had promised rich success, by 
a dubious pair of lungs which drove him from an 
office into an out-door life. Hampered by no cares 
for the fortune which was already his, Wade Win- 
throp worked at being a reporter as strenuously as 
if his daily bread depended on his turning out so 
many words a day, as if his salary went into his 
own pocket, instead of into the pockets of his less 
fortunate brothers with whom his work brought him 
into constant and unexpected contacts. Wade's 
New York life was bringing him rich return for his 
hours of bleak disappointment; none richer, though, 


116 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


than his close association with his cousin, Sidney 
Stayre. 

It was solely for Sidney’s sake that he gave 
up other things, that morning, gave up even his 
long-held hope of a quiet, confidential talk with her, 
in order to render himself agreeable to her chosen 
friend. Moreover, when he liked, few men could be 
more agreeable than Wade Winthrop, whose young 
manhood had been subjected to every polishing 
process known to riches and brains. To his surprise, 
he found his efforts well rewarded; of the three, he 
was the sorriest when the luncheon hour put an end 
to the morning. The talk, by way of Irene’s sister 
and kindred interests in the matter of lungs, had 
wandered off to Dresden where, as it chanced, they 
had spent the self-same winter, Wade as idler just 
out of college, Irene as a child at school. It had 
returned by way of Harvard where Irene’s uncle had 
instructed Wade in Greek literature, and it ended, 
where it had begun, in the discussion of a story in 
the last-night’s paper, whose authorship Wade was 
careful to keep a secret. And, all along the devious 
path of their talk, each was recording to himself his 
good opinion of the other. 

“ I am so glad you do like Wade,” Sidney said, 
after luncheon, while the two girls were resting in 
Sidney’s room, before deciding how to pass the after- 
noon. 

“ Of course I like him. Who wouldn’t? ” Irene 
made conclusive answer. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


117 


“ A good many people. Some of my friends call 
him very snobbish/’ Sidney told her. “ It is only 
that he is so quiet, though, and refuses to talk just 
for the sake of saying things. It always makes me 
want to pound people, when they don’t appreciate 
him; but then, I know how good he is, and how 
clever.” 

“ Anybody ought to see that.” 

“ They don’t, though; they just think he is dull 
and stiff. Irene,” as she spoke, Sidney crossed the 
room and cast herself down on the rug at Irene’s 
feet; “ I wonder if you have any idea what Wade 
is doing for me. We aren’t rich; you can see that 
with one corner of one eye. It is all my father can 
do — more than he ought — to keep me going at a 
place like Smith. One night, just a week before I 
went away,” Sidney’s voice dropped to a murmur, 
and her eyes, fixed upon the rug, showed that, for the 
moment, her guest was quite forgotten, save as an 
outlet for her girlish heart; “ one night after the 
children were all in bed, Wade came to me in the 
library, and told me all he had hoped to do with his 
own education, all he had had to give up. Do you 
know, I was such a stupid, blind pig of a cousin, I 
had thought he had stopped caring. That night, 
I found out I was mistaken.” She paused for a 
minute or two, biting her lip, as the memory of their 
talk became more insistent. Then she resumed. 
“ And so he told me all about it. Then he went 
on and talked about my college, the good it would 


118 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


do me, the fun I was going to have, the chance it 
was going to give me to do the things he’d had to let 
go. Honestly, Irene, it seems too sacred, somehow, 
to tell over, even to you; only I want you to know 
just what he is. And, in the very end, after we had 
talked for more than an hour, he started to go to bed; 
but at the door he stopped long enough to tell me, as 
if it were a thing of no especial account, that he had 
put money, a lot of money, into the Northampton 
bank for me to have for an allowance, so I could be 
in all the fun, and not feel scrimped or worried. And 
that,” Sidney paused again, her eyes still fixed upon 
the rug; “ and that, Irene, is Wade Winthrop. Do 
you wonder that I love him best of all the world, 
except my mother? ” 

“ No,” Irene made answer slowly; “ no, I don’t.” 

None the less and despite the earnest answer, 
Sidney could not see that Irene’s attitude to Wade 
had changed appreciably by reason of her story. 
The fact was, the story had come a little late. Irene’s 
attitude, like Wade’s own, had been already taken. 

Wade saw them off, next morning, saw them off 
with a manifest regret which was as manifestly 
deepened by Irene’s announcement that her Christ- 
mas holidays were to be spent in Chicago. Later, 
Wade’s frequent letters invariably held, by way of 
close, a message to Irene; and Sidney’s letters back 
again quite as invariably included a message of reply. 
Under some conditions, she might have rebelled 
at this being converted to a sort of' postal sub- 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


119 


contractor; but not when the converting lay between 
two people such as Irene Jessup and her cousin 
Wade. She merely smiled inscrutably to herself, and 
underlined the messages at will, before she sent them 
speeding to their destination. 

And now, with Irene at her side, Sidney was sitting 
in the gallery of the south transept, listening to the 
concert with heedless ears while she tried to make up 
her mind whether she would be more glad at the 
seeing Wade so soon, or sad at the parting from Irene. 
A little stir aroused her from her reverie, roused her 
to the consciousness that the last number of the 
programme had come, and that the clubs were mass- 
ing themselves at the front of the stage. 

“ Fair Smith, our praise to thee we render. 

Oh, dearest college halls .” 

There was a slight sensation in the back gallery, 
and Sidney turned her eyes that way. Alone in her 
corner, a small figure with a thin, dark face and lam- 
bent eyes had risen to her feet and stood at attention, 
while up through the vaulted red rafters overhead 
echoed the lilt of the high, sweet chorus. 

“ May thy children, thee addressing, 

Speak in loyal hearts thy blessing, 

Alma Mater! ” 

The last words died away, and Janet sat down 
again. Later, at dinner, she explained herself a bit 
defiantly. 


120 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ At home, we always rise to God Save the King” 
she told her neighbour at the table. “ Do you sup- 
pose I’d sit through Fair Smith ? ” 

And Day, hearing, held her peace. Later, that 
same evening, she repeated Janet’s dictum to Rob, 
and they both rejoiced, as at Janet’s first sign of 
approaching regeneration. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


121 


CHAPTER TEN 

’S easy enough,” Rob explained reassuringly. 



“ Just grip it tight with one hand, and plunk 
it with the other.” 

“ But it won’t plunk; it only just grumbles,” 
Janet made disconsolate response. 

“ Try it again a little harder,” Rob advised her. 
“ You’ll get the hang of it in time.” 

“ Don’t be too sure.” 

“ Of course you can. Anybody can play the 
banjo, anybody with an ear like yours.” 

“ Which? ” Janet queried. 

“ The right one, of course. The other would be 
left, in any comparison. But now go it; one, two, 
three ! ” 

Thus adjured, Janet grasped the banjo and tweaked 
lustily at the strings which gave out a feeble moan 
as of injured dignity and pain. 

“ Horrid thing! What’s the use? ” she said petu- 
lantly. 

“ To learn. It’s good fun, when you get the trick. 
Listen!” And Rob, seizing the banjo from Janet’s 
inert fingers, held it tantalizingly aloft while, with his 
jolly blue eyes glued to her face, he thrummed out 
the opening bars of Fair Smith. 


122 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


The face relaxed into a smile. 

“ Oh, how I do love that! ” she sighed, half to her- 
self. 

“ Play it, then.” 

“ I can’t.” 

“ Not till you try.” 

“ Until I came to college,” Janet observed a little 
snippily; “ I always supposed nobody but a nigger 
ever touched a banjo.” 

“ Then you can set down one lesson to Smith’s 
account,” Rob observed, while he nodded in time 
to his thrumming. 

“Yes, I suppose so. Still, it’s not of so much 
account, after all. You couldn’t expect me to know 
about your national instruments,” Janet explained, 
still a little snippily. 

Rob left off his thrumming and smiled at her 
languishingly. 

“ Hi, there! Janet? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Did you say something? ” 

“ I did.” 

“ Well, you mixed yourself, and said a mistaken, 
as Day used to call it. Africa is yours, not ours. At 
least, you appear to want to claim it.” 

“ What of it? ” Janet inquired shortly. 

“ Ethnology; that’s all. Out of Africa came the 
niggers, as you term them, and under the arm of 
the nigger must have come his banjo.” 

Janet attacked a side issue. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


123 


“ What do you call them? ” she demanded. 

“ I? I merely whistle, and say ‘ George! ’ George 
always seems to me a dark-complected sort of name. 
They call themselves coloured people, without stopping 
to specify whether it’s green or blue, though I believe 
their bluest bloods are black. Now, young woman, 
vacation’s over. Will you please take this banjo and 
fall to.” 

Janet laughed. 

“ But suppose I don’t want to? ” 

“ Then you’ll be a sneak,” Rob answered blandly; 
“ a sneak that’s afraid of a little work. You told me 
you wanted to have a whack at my banjo, and now 
you’re in for it.” 

“ But I can’t make it go,” Janet protested. 

Hands in pockets and head far on one side, Rob 
smiled down at her with undiminished friendliness. 

“ I wouldn’t be downed by a little thing like that,” 
he offered comment. 

Janet looked up at him with hostility, then with the 
little throb of liking which never failed to stir her, 
when she allowed herself to meet Rob’s jovial, 
kind blue eyes. Then she gritted her teeth. 

“ I won’t,” she answered. “ Go ahead. What 
next? ” 

It was still three days before Christmas, but the 
Leslies had come down, the night before, in fulfilment 
of their promise to spend the holidays in the Argyle 
home. Two days later, they would all go out to 
Heatherleigh, the country place which it was the 


124 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Argyle custom to throw open upon Christmas Day. 
In the meantime, the younger Argyles were full of 
plans for showing off their city to their guests, plans 
which had been rudely shattered, for that day, by 
the snow that was falling with an industry worthy of 
Janet’s Canadian home. Housebound, they had 
telephoned for Sidney; but Sidney was entirely 
engrossed with the varying claims made upon her 
time by half a dozen lesser Stay res. Then Day 
had vanished in the carriage, bound for the shops 
and for the Christmas jokes and playthings to be 
found therein. Deserted, Rob and Janet had be- 
taken themselves to the library, where Rob had 
fulfilled his threat to Day, the threat to unearth 
in Janet’s make-up the germs of some purely human 
hobby. He found it with unexpected promptness, 
blundered upon it w T hen he was least aware it was 
in reach. Two hours later, Day came in, rosy with 
cold and her arms full of little bundles. She looked 
and listened. Then, in mercy to her aching ears, 
she fled lest, as she confided to her mother, the sound 
should get frozen permanently inside and become 
a lasting echo in her brain. 

“ I must say, Rob, you have better grit than I 
have,” she assured her brother, when they were 
alone, that night. 

Rob laughed. 

“ It is pretty gritty,” he confessed. “ Still, it’s 
wholesome, even if it’s not high art. She’ll get 
the knack of it in time.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


125 


“ Or in eternity,” Day corrected him. 

“ That’s not Janet. She’s not that sort. With her, 
once her mind is really made up, it’s a case of time or 
nothing. Anyhow, it’s worth while, if only for the 
sake of stirring her up a bit. I haven’t seen her so 
much like her old self, since we left Quebec.” 

“ I do hope she is going to have a good time here,” 
Day said thoughtfully. 

“ She’ll have a good time fast enough, once she 
gets started,” Rob predicted, as he stretched himself 
out at ease on the great leather couch and clasped 
his hands at the back of his head. “ There’s plenty 
to see, and enough to do, and, when she gets tired 
of our American ways, she can hunt up her mother 
and Canadianize with her to her heart’s content. 
In fact, that’s Janet’s worst fault : the being so beastly 
loyal that she never can make up her mind whether 
the rest of the world is more in need of snubbing or 
sympathy.” Suddenly he rolled over on his side 
and faced his sister. “ Oh, but it’s good to have 
you to gossip with once more! ” he said content- 
edly. 

Day, as she sat half-buried in her chair with the fire- 
light playing across her white cloth frock, had been 
studying her brother’s face with absent eyes. Now 
all at once, at his abrupt words, her brown eyes 
gathered focus and lighted until they transfigured 
her whole face. 

“ Rob, you nice old thing! ” she said, as she rose, 
crossed the bit of floor that lay between them, and 


126 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


plumped herself down on the edge of the couch. 
“ Then you really do keep on caring? ” 

“ You bet I do! ” Rob made sentimental answer; 
but his hand, shutting on the wide lace frill that 
edged Day’s puffy sleeves, was full of gentleness. 
“ Come up here,” he adjured her. “ I want you to 
cuddle, and, besides, you’re sitting exactly on my 
rickety knee. I’m saving that for better things 
than the support of an eighth of a ton of feminine 
frivolity.” 

With a little hitch, Day nestled closer to him, bent 
on one elbow and fell to twisting his yellow hair. 

“ I wish it would get strong, Rob,” she said, when 
a dozen diminutive pugs adorned his brow. 

“ Well, it won’t,” he answered philosophically. 
“ I fancy it’s about reached its limit. Still, I can do 
most things besides dancing and football, so I needn’t 
wail too much. I’d have liked to go in for hockey, 
too; but that’s knocked out. I say, Day? ” 

“ Well? ” 

“ Speaking of hockey, have you noticed what 
chums Jack and Janet are getting? ” 

Day laughed. 

“ Because they can Canadianize together, I sup- 
pose.” 

“ Mayhap. I think it’s more because Jack is sorry 
for her, and is trying to get her out of the frame of 
mind where she keeps her teeth on edge. Still, they 
do get on together. I noticed it, that day we all 
went motoring. Janet was positively coy, that 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


127 


night, when she said good-bye to Jack. He liked her, 
too, said he did, when we were riding down to Spring- 
field.” Rob chuckled. “ I remember I had to inter- 
rupt his monologue concerning you two girls by 
requesting him to get out and shoo a stray horse out 
of the road. He always does hate to be interrupted 
in a monologue.” 

“ Jack! He doesn’t do monologues,” Day said 
disdainfully. 

Rob chuckled again, It was a favourite trick of 
his, this rousing Day to the defence of Jack. 

“ Not on your life! Not when I’m about, to head 
him off. Where is he now? ” 

“ Playing David to Janet’s Saul,” Day suggested. 

“ Not much. I’m up for that engagement. But 
has Jack come in? ” 

“ He has.” And Jack came strolling into the room 
and cast himself down into the chair which Day had 
but just abandoned. “ Is there any room for me in 
this party? ” 

“ Sure.” Rob curled up his legs into a knot. 
“ Would you like a corner of the sofy? ” 

“ Thanks! I prefer this. I merely wished to know 
I wasn’t in the way of any academic confidences.” 

“ Never!” Day’s smile confirmed the fervour of 
her tone. “ We were just wishing you would come. 
Where have you been, ever since dinner? ” 

“ Over at the Stay res’.” 

“ See Phyllis? ” Rob queried, for the old-time 
animosity towards Jack bestowed upon him by 


128 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Sidney’s younger sister was a time-worn joke, a 
joke which had come near to ending in tragedy, for 
it was in behalf of Phyllis’s safety that Jack had won 
his scarred face. 

Now he laughed for, though time and the shadow 
of that tragedy had done their part towards Phyllis’s 
softening, still no one ever was inclined to treat her 
moods as anything but a joke. 

“ Yes, I saw Phil, and she is a cooing dove, just at 
present. I likewise saw Sidney, and she told me to 
say she would be over, early in the morning.” 

“ Shame she can’t go out to Heatherleigh ! ” Rob 
made tranquil comment. 

“ I wouldn’t go, in her place,” Day said bluntly. 
“ Of course, I’d love the having her; but I think she 
ought to stay at home, as long as she only has just 
this little while in town.” 

“ You might take Phil in her place,” Jack suggested. 

“ Merciful Moses ! Don’t ! ” Rob shuddered at the 
thought. “ I’d rather have a hedgehog in a burning 
bush, with a ring of ravens sitting round and shriek- 
ing for manna. Phil is a good child. Likewise, she 
is improving. However, I think she’ll improve faster 
under her mother’s fostering care. Is she taking it 
out of Sidney very badly? ” 

“ N-no,” Jack made dubious answer. “ I think 
she is pretty much dropping that sort of thing, 
except in seasons of great stress of mind. All the 
fall, I’ve run across her now and then by way of Wade, 
and I think she’s never been quite so — so vigorous 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


129 


since last spring's chastening. That really seemed 
a means of sanctification to the young woman." 

Day abandoned her efforts to beautify her brother 
and faced about. 

“ That’s always the way it works," she said im- 
patiently. “ She got the sanctification; you got the 
scars. No," for Jack flushed; “ they aren’t horrid 
at all, Jack. Truly, I almost like them; they make 
the rest of you so — so — " 

“ Messy? ’’ he queried. 

“ No. So well worth while." As she spoke, she 
rose, crossed the rug and stood facing him, a slender, 
white-gowned figure with round bare arms and 
brown eyes which, of a sudden, had lost their mirth 
and grown deep and dark and tender. “ I wouldn’t 
have any of it different, Jack," she went on slowly. 
“ I’m not even sure I’d take away all those horrid 
days when we were waiting to see what would be the 
end of it all, any more than Rob and I would be willing 
to give up any of those other days in Quebec, when he 
was laid up and aching. Sometimes one gets to know 
people better when things are horrid than when they 
all go right. I used to think you were almost like 
my own brother, before that night. Now I know 
you weren’t; because, till then, I hadn’t begun to 
know you." 

Jack’s eyes were very grave, in spite of his quizzical, 
mocking question, — 

“ And, now you do know me, what then? " 

But Rob broke in, before Day had time to answer. 


130 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ This library has had some strenuous scenes 
within its walls, Day. Do you remember the time 
we mumped along together, all we three? ” 

Day nodded across at Jack. 

“ That was when it began,” she said. 

“ Not much,” Rob corrected coolly. “ It began 
when you played in the snow with Sir George and 
caught pneumonia. That was something worth 
while. We did that up in great shape: pneumonia, 
telegrams, snowbound trains, pretty near a shipwreck, 
and all the rest. When I grow up and write books 
for a living, I’m going to use it for a plot, only I shall 
kill off all the victims.” 

“ People die of mumps sometimes,” Day reminded 
him. 

“ Yes, and just think how it looks in the papers! ” 
Rob made disdainful answer. “ I’d hate to be the 
subject of a paragraph like that. Where’s Janet, by 
the way? ” 

Day, once more settled on the couch, started up in 
sudden contrition. 

“ Rob! I forgot her.” 

“ Well, keep on forgetting. Where are you 
going? ” 

“ To hunt her up.” 

Stretching out his arms, Rob caught her by the 
waist and pulled her down again beside him. 

“ Oh, don’t,” he said. “ It will spoil all the tradi- 
tion. This place belongs to just us three people; 
let’s take the good of it together.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


131 


And Jack added, as he settled back in his chair and 
stuck his feet out towards the blazing coals, — 

“ Most likely she has gone to bed by now, Day. 
I wouldn’t disturb her, if I were in your place.” 

And Day, who was nothing if not human, smothered 
her conscience and settled down again to the full 
enjoyment of the two people who, next to her 
parents, she loved best on earth. 

Nevertheless and in spite of his advice to Day, 
Jack was in no sense disloyal to his new-made friend- 
ship with Janet Leslie. It was only that Jack Blan- 
chard had a trick, too rare in this world, of preferring 
old friends to new. Rob and Day, for no reason at 
all and in their own off-hand, warm-hearted fashion, 
had totally reconstructed his life at the precise 
moment when his life needed it the most. It was no 
easy thing for a boy, well-born, well-bred, a boy who 
had left his university to fight his country’s battles, 
to turn away from the last of those battlefields to 
face the fact that now he must fight on his own 
account, must do something, no matter what, to 
provide for the old mother left all at once without 
resources. Jack had done the first thing that offered, 
and had done it well, albeit the first thing had been 
the duty of a Pullman car conductor. It was in the 
course of that duty that he had met Rob Argyle, 
that, without in the least suspecting that his jovial,- 
yellow-haired passenger was the son of one of Ameri- 
ca’s greatest railway presidents, he had won Rob’s 
liking, then his love. Later, when he had come 


132 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


to New York to take a place in Mr. Argyle’s office, 
it had been Rob and Day, first one, then the other, 
then both, who had drawn him, a homesick stranger, 
into their home life and then into at least the edge 
of their own social set, had stood by him in dreary 
days of illness, had stealthily laid their plans to bring 
his mother down from Toronto, to gladden the tedious 
time of his convalescence. And Jack, remembering 
all this, totally forgetting his own loyalty and devo- 
tion to these good friends of his, had mourned acutely 
at the breaking up of their congenial trio, when Rob 
had gone away to Harvard, Day to Smith. Now, 
quite as acutely, he rejoiced in their home-coming, 
in the temporary return to the old ways, and he 
would have been half inclined to grudge the Leslies 
their welcome in the family circle, the consequent 
interruption of certain old-time traditions, had he not 
known from his own experience just what that wel- 
come meant to an expatriated Canadian. 

Still, it was an interruption, all the same, and now 
and then he forgot to repine too loudly when Janet 
succumbed to early drowsiness and took herself away 
to bed. 

However, the last night of the vacation found 
him standing alone with Janet before the fire in the 
great reception hall. 

“ Where are Rob and Day? ” he had asked, as, hat 
in hand, he had halted at her side. 

“ Gone for a drive,” Janet made answer, as she 
stopped thrumming on the banjo which Rob had given 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


133 


her, New Year morning. “ We’ve been skating, 
Day and I, all the afternoon; and, when we came in, 
Day had an attack of conscience for deserting Rob 
and dragged him out for a tour of the parks. It’s 
nearly time they were at home.” 

“ You found the skating good? ” 

“ Fair. Not like ours, though.” 

Jack laughed. 

“ Would you admit it, if it were? ” he asked ban- 
teringly. 

Janet flushed. Then she echoed his laugh. 

“ No; I think not,” she said honestly. “ Of 
course, I prefer Quebec to all the New Yorks in the 
world. Still, I’ve had a glorious time down here, and 
I’m glad I came.” 

“ And glad to go? ” he queried idly. 

“ Yes,” she echoed; “ and glad to go. It is time. 
Nowadays, I’m not used to butlers and things; 
I never saw a house like this, and I’m not sure it’s 
good for me. It teaches me how many things there 
are to want. That is partly the fault I find with 
Smith. We Canadian girls don’t even know the 
names of the things the girls there feel they must 
have as their right. I like the things; I should 
adore them, if I had them. Still, I like our ways the 
best. It is two opposite pulls, you see, and I some- 
times think they are what make me so cross-grained.” 

“ And yet you want to go back? ” he asked, watch- 
ing her with the keen, kind glance of a big brother 
who understood her worriment. 


134 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Yes, because it’s time I was at work. I think I 
was meant to work, Mr. Blanchard; I’m happiest, 
when I’m very, very busy. And, some day, I mean 
to make my work tell.” 

He nodded. 

“ I remember.” 

Janet faced him impulsively. 

“ Yes; that’s the joy of you,” she said. “ You do 
remember things.” 

His smile showed his appreciation of the little 
compliment. 

“ Why not? I felt immensely proud in your telling. 
But you don’t mean to work all the time, Miss Janet? 
Why not play a little, now and then? ” 

He was astonished at the sudden lighting of her 
face, as she held out the little banjo towards him. 

“ I shall, on this,” she answered. “ Some day, 
you may find me in the banjo club, helping do a 
concert. If you do, it will be thanks to Rob; it’s 
all his work.” 

“ If I do, I’ll applaud till my hands are blistered,” 
he told her, laughing. 

But Janet ignored the laugh. She faced him 
gravely. 

“ I have a notion it may make a difference,” she 
went on. “ Anyway, I mean to try, and Rob says 
I can, in time. If I could play, could play enough 
to be asked into the club, it would make things 
over for me. I should feel then as if I were a little 
piece of the whole,” she laughed nervously; “ a 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


135 


little dull stitch in the whole great fabric. Can’t 
you see what I mean? ” 

He nodded. Then, — 

“ You’d like it? ” he asked. 

There came a little catch in Janet’s breath. 

“ I’d give my life to get it for myself,” she confessed; 
“ but I’d die before I’d ask it of the girls.” 

And, the next moment, a rush of air from the open- 
ing door betrayed the advent of Rob and Day. 


136 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 

“ TTUSH! ” Helen Pope warned her sister. 

J— L Amy gave an anxious glance about the room. 
Only a thorough search, however, could detect the 
fact of the absence of any given girl, since, by way 
of promoting general conversation and breaking up 
incipient cliques, Mrs. Leslie had hit upon the ex- 
pedient of having the napkin rings gathered up at the 
end of every meal and dealt out again among the 
plates according to the dictates of pure chance. 
Confronted by the alternatives of starvation and 
renouncing a pet animosity, the girls invariably chose 
the latter as the lesser evil, and Leslie house feuds 
came to untimely ends in consequence. 

With careful deliberation, then, Amy looked up 
and down the room, over one shoulder, then the 
other. Then, assured that the object of her search 
was undoubtedly absent, she took up her theme anew. 

“ I think it is per-fectly contemp-tible,” she said, 
with the downright emphasis which had first won 
Day Argyle’s liking. 

She liked it now. 

“ I don’t see, I confess, what it has to do with the 
rights of the case,” she said. 

“ It hasn’t anything, not a single, solitary, lone- 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


137 


some thing. They only say it has, for the sake of 
making trouble.” Amy plunged her fork into her 
baked potato as if she were spearing an imaginary 
foe. 

“ But why should they make trouble? ” asked 
another voice. 

Amy turned her weapon in the imaginary foe. 

“ Jealousy! ” she said explosively. 

“ What in the world are they jealous of? ” 

“ Because we’re the elect of the earth, here in this 
house. We know it and keep still about it; they 
talk about it, confirm it by the energy of their denials. 
Then, just because we don’t fight like the cats of 
Kilkenny, they say we’re a ring, and trying to rule 
the class. Mother Leslie, did you ever hear anything 
so absurd? ” Amy lifted up her voice in a veritable 
wail of protest. 

It was Day who once more took up the refrain. 

“ If their candidate were as good — ” she began 
slowly. 

Amy cut in. 

“ She isn’t; she’s no good at all. A feather bolster 
in dancing shoes and a court train would do better 
than she.” 

“ Then why do they rush her so? ” 

“Politics!” screamed an irate chorus, and Mrs. 
Leslie looked up with what Day called her “ Less 
noise, please ” expression. 

“ Day,” Amy’s voice continued, in a solo; “ you 
are a guileless dear.” 


138 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Day leaned back in her chair, nodding, the while, 
at the maid waiting to take her plate. 

“ Well, I am glad I am,” she confessed. 

The chorus laughed. It was Helen who answered 
from across the table, — 

“ Then you have achieved your heart’s desire, Day. 
What did you suppose they wanted to put that squab 
in for? ” 

“I — Really, I don’t know. I couldn’t see that 
she was good for much; but I supposed they had 
some reason or other.” 

“ So they had,” Amy struck in. “ The only trouble 
is that it is a bad one.” 

“ There is one comfort,” came a voice from farther 
down the table ; “ the suspense is bound to be short. 
They have managed to keep the matter hanging fire 
till the last possible moment; but they will have to 
settle it, one way or the other, within a day or 
two.” 

“ They say Irene Jessup is absolutely down on the 
squab, as Helen calls her,” said another voice. 

Amy laughed shortly. 

“ And they also say we have brought influences to 
bear upon Irene,” she answered. 

“ What influences, I’d like to know,” Day ques- 
tioned hotly. 

“ Two Sunday night suppers, and Helen’s fudge 
party,” some one responded. “ They evidently 
think Irene’s judgment is an island floating around 
somewhere in her gastric juice. Imagine Irene 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


139 


Jessup influenced by any crowd of freshmen, a girl 
who stands as she does for the college! ” 

“ Anyway,” Amy’s spoon beat time to her words; 
“ anyhow, if they do change things now and put in 
another captain, after all they’ve said, I’ll cut my 
class for ever after.” 

“ Hush! ” Helen said again. 

An instant later, Sidney Stay re came into the room. 

“ Do please excuse me, Mother Leslie!” she said 
contritely. “ I’m sorry to be so disgustingly late; 
but they’re still at work on trials for the team, and 
I really couldn ’t get away. Dear me ! What a silence ! 
Is anybody something wrong? ” And, dropping into 
her chair, she attacked her luncheon with a healthy 
appetite which betokened her unconsciousness of all 
impending trouble. 

Nevertheless, trouble came, came just two days 
later; and it was Irene who was detailed to break 
the ugly news. 

“ Sidney? ” she said interrogatively, as she halted 
on the threshold of the great front room where Sidney 
sat alone, tugging away at an obstinate page of Greek. 

“ Come in. Oh, do just sit down and keep still, 
though, till I fit in this horrid participle,” Sidney 
besought her, with a casual gesture at a chair. “ I’m 
glad to see you, and I’m dying for a gossip; but I 
must get this done, and Oavfia^ovTa won’t agree 
with anything inside a radius of ten lines.” 

For five minutes more, Sidney bent her brows over 
the perplexing word, then, casting aside her dictionary 


140 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


and Homer, she looked up. To her surprise, she saw 
that Irene was a little pale and frowning intently at 
the clasps of her gloves, which clicked nervously 
between her restless fingers. 

“ Well, Miss Undertaker? ” Sidney accosted her 
irreverently. “ Who’s dead and buried at your house 
now? It is horribly unbecoming to you to look so 
glum as all that.” 

As if goaded to sudden speech, Irene blurted out 
her errand. 

“ Sidney, you darling, I’ve come to tell you some- 
thing bad.” 

In her turn, Sidney whitened. Then she laughed 
a little nervously. 

“ It must be something pretty bad, to drag a 
darling out of you,” she observed. “ Out with it, 
Irene, and have it over.” 

“ I may as well,” Irene said bluntly. “ I never 
could see the sense of telling bad news backwards; 
you only imagine worse things, while one is coming to 
the point.” 

“ Come, then, and end my anxiety.” Sidney spoke 
a bit impatiently, for Irene’s manner showed that 
something was much amiss, and the suspense was 
telling even upon Sidney’s steady nerves. 

Irene bit her lip. Then she said, with a brave 
directness that cost her far more than Sidney ever 
knew, — 

“ Sidney, the basket ball team for your class is 
finally made up. I have just seen the list.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


141 


Sidney caught her breath, grew a shade paler, then 
shut her teeth together hard. 

“ And some one else is captain? ” she asked com- 
posedly at last. 

Again Irene bit her lip. She knew the full weight 
of the blow she was about to deal. For six weeks 
past, now, she and Sidney had been wont to discuss 
the basket ball situation in its least detail; Sidney 
was quite well aware that she herself was the choice 
of the whole junior team for freshman captain, knew 
that, by reason of the traditional alliance between 
the alternating classes, the junior preference was 
bound to carry weight. 

“ No,” she said slowly; “ no; you’re not the 
captain.” 

Sidney never flinched. 

“ I’m sorry,” she said steadily. “ Who is? ” 

“ Agatha Gilbert.” 

Again Sidney nodded, once and yet again. 

“ I think I understand,” she said. “ It is the 
working of that other set. Well, as I say, I am sorry; 
but Agatha may do ever so much more than we have 
expected of her, may win both games for us, 
for all we know.” She was talking, Irene saw, to 
gain time while she digested her bitter disappoint- 
ment. “ Where have they put me?” she asked at 
length. 

Irene rose and crossed the room, picked up a book 
that lay upon the table, dropped it, crossed back 
again and sat down on the arm of Sidney’s chair. 


142 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Sidney, meanwhile, watched her with eyes of mingled 
sorrow and amusement. 

“ Don’t take it too tragically, Irene,” she said 
whimsically, after Irene had stroked her hand for 
several speechless moments. “ Of course, with you, 
there is no especial sense in pretending I’m not badly 
disappointed. I am disappointed. I wanted to be 
captain, wanted it more than I’ve ever wanted any- 
thing in all my life. I’d planned all sorts of nonsense 
about leading a winning team, making a record for 
the class that would stand for us to boast about in 
our reunions. I’d even planned the mascot. I sup- 
pose it was silly. I ought to have known better than 
to count so far ahead. Still, if I was silly, I’ve had 
my come-uppance.” She smiled a little wanly. “ No; 
don’t stir. You’re a comfortable old dear, and you 
don’t tell things. Just let me make my moan to you, 
and then I’ll get a grip on myself. I promise you I 
won’t show the others that I have done any wailing.” 

“ I will, then,” Irene said stormily. 

Sidney checked her, with a sudden gesture. 

“ Don’t. It won’t do me any good, and it will 
only make it hard for Agatha.” 

“ Who cares for Agatha? ” Irene demanded hotly. 

“ I do. She’s really not so bad, and she plays a 
good game, as long as she’s able to keep her head. 
Truly, it has always been a mystery to me how any- 
body that’s so fat can do as well as she.” 

“ Oh, yes, if it comes to that,” Irene conceded. 
“ Still, you’ve half a dozen better girls.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


143 


“ I know we have,” Sidney assented, her innate 
honesty downing, for the moment, her loyalty to 
her successful rival. “ I wonder why they chose 
her.” 

“ Politics! She’s plastic!” Irene answered in a 
two-fold explosion. 

“ What’s the politics? ” Sidney asked. 

Irene stared at her in amazement. 

“ Sidney! You mole! Don’t you know that the 
Harriman crowd have been working against you from 
the start? ” 

Sidney looked up, astonished. 

“ No. Have they? How should I? ” 

“ Just by not being the mole-iest sort of a bat. 
They have been against you from the very first of the 
season. I supposed you knew.” 

“ I hadn’t time for such fusses,” Sidney replied 
disdainfully. “ I was too busy, training. What 
didn’t they like? ” 

Irene held up two fingers. 

“ Your being in . this house.” She lowered one. 
“ Your being Day Argyle’s roommate.” She lowered 
the other. 

“ What did that have to do with my game? ” 
Sidney demanded, in hot wrath. 

“ Nothing at all. It merely had to do with their 
notion of politics. They have been saying, up and 
down the class, that you Leslie girls think you own 
the college, and that it’s high time somebody stopped 
you; that it would be a four-year scandal to allow 


144 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


class president and freshman basket ball captain to 
be roommates, especially in a house like this.” 

“ What utter nonsense! ” 

“ Of course it’s nonsense, nonsense of the most 
futile sort. That’s characteristic of them.” 

“ And they would throw over the question of play, 
throw over their chances to win the game, just for a 
little thing like that? ” 

“ Apparently. Else, they’d not have chosen 
Agatha.” Irene spoke crisply. 

“ She may not be so bad.” 

“ She is, though. All our girls are furious at the 
choice.” 

Sidney yielded to her curiosity. 

“ Irene, what do they really think of her? ” she 
queried. 

Irene’s answer came pat. 

“ That she’s a brainless feather bed, as fit for 
captain as she is for leading an expedition into 
Thibet.” 

Sidney pondered. 

“ I wish I didn’t think so, too,” she said despond- 
ently. “ I’d be willing to step back to let in some 
girls, Irene. I hope I’m large enough to care more 
for the class than for myself. Of course, I’d love the 
fuss and feathers, the getting the flowers and the 
being able to tell of it at home. Still, if I honestly 
thought Agatha could outclass me, I’d step down 
and out with a good grace. But — she can’t.” 

“ No,” Irene assented ; “ nor ever can.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


145 


“ That's the very worst of the whole thing/' 
Sidney answered slowly. “ It's so irrevocable; Rally 
Day is only a few weeks off, and she needs no end of 
training. We haven’t the ghost of a chance to win; 
our only hope is to hold down the score against the 
sophomores, and stand by Agatha as well as we can." 

“ We can't," Irene mutinied. 

“ We can, too. Agatha isn't to blame." 

“ She is, then! She might have had the sense and 
decency to refuse." 

Sidney raised her head. 

“ No girl would do that," she said. 

“ You would." 

“ No," she confessed a little sadly. “ I might think 
I would; but, when it came to case in hand, I know 
I wouldn't. Girls aren't made that way, Irene." 

Then, for a while, the silence deepened, grew insist- 
ent. Sidney broke it. 

“ There is only one thing for us to do," she said 
decisively at length. “ When Agatha loses her head, 
she is good for nothing at all; it would demoralize 
her completely, if she thought the team and you 
junior girls distrusted her. We must grit our teeth 
and stand by her, if we have to fib ourselves neck- 
deep into purgatory to accomplish it. It's a fact, 
Irene. We've got to put our consciences into our 
pockets, and burn much incense before Agatha, if 
we have any notion of keeping the class from utter, 
absolute annihilation." 

Irene drew a deep sigh. 


146 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ You may be right,” she was beginning guardedly; 
but Sidney caught her up. 

“ Of course, Fm right. I know what I am talking 
about. Under all her fatness, Agatha is a bundle of 
nerves. Fm callous as a broomstick; but even I go 
all to pieces, if I think the girls are saying things 
about me. Irene,” she looked up suddenly, as a 
vagrant recollection crossed her mind; “ how much 
is this thing known? ” 

“ It will be all over college by bedtime,” Irene 
said gloomily. “ There are probably a dozen or two 
indignation meetings going on at this very moment. 
There’s one, to my certain knowledge.” 

“ Where? ” 

“ In the Popes’ room. I met Day in the hall. We 
came up-stairs together, and I saw her going in there 
on her heels.” 

Sidney laughed ; but her eyes glittered suspiciously. 

“ Poor old Day! It will come hard on her,” she 
said. 

Irene nodded, bracing herself, the while, for that 
part of her tidings which still remained untold. 

“ It did come hard. Day has cared much more 
about this than she did about being president. She’s 
not the only one, though. I saw Janet Leslie, and she 
said Things, Things not to be repeated.” 

This time, Sidney laughed. 

“ Janet has a way of expressing herself plainly, 
now and then. Well, I suppose it’s all over college by 
now. I think I’ll be cutting chapel, in the morning.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


147 


“Not much! You can’t show the white feather, 
Sidney Stayre,” Irene made indignant protest. 
“ We’ve arranged all that, anyway. Gladys Allen 
is coming up, just before bedtime, to ask you to sit 
in senior seats with her, and you’ll lead out with Alice 
Powell. Even the seniors are furious, this time; 
they say they’d rather have the sophomores lose the 
game than win it by a stroke of absolute injustice.” 

Sidney drew a long breath. 

“ I hate the making a spectacle of myself,” she 
mutinied. “ It’s nice of them; but I shall feel an 
utter idiot, and as if I couldn’t fight my own battles. 
Still, if I must, I must; and I suppose one can’t 
decently refuse such things. But, about its being 
known, Irene, I didn’t mean just now; but have 
the others known ’twas coming? ” 

Irene nodded. 

“ They’ve spent the last six days in hoping the 
lightning would strike and prevent it,” she answered 
grimly. 

Sidney faced her steadily. 

“ I thought so. It explains a good many things, 
a few words I’ve overheard, and a lot of sudden 
silences and spurts of conversation when I appeared 
among the girls. Well, I am glad I didn’t know it 
was coming; there is no especial comfort in anticipa- 
ting one’s woes. By the way, you messenger of 
ill omen, do you realize you haven’t told me yet 
where they have done myself the honour to put 
me? ” 


148 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


The very suddenness of the question broke down 
Irene’s guard. 

“ That’s the worst of all, Sidney,” she burst out 
without preface. “ You’re not on the team at all; 
they’ve put you down as substitute.” 

“ Irene! ” It was a frightened, pitiful sort of cry, 
as of a child in mortal pain calling to its elder for 
help and comfort. Then Sidney steadied to the blow 
which had fallen, cruel, unexpected, straight between 
the eyes. “ Would you mind leaving me alone? ” 
she asked. “ I can’t talk about it any more just now, 
Irene.” 

And Irene had the tact to rise, without another 
word. 

At the door, she turned back at Sidney’s voice. 

“ Wait, Irene,” she said, and, crossing the floor, 
she put up her arms on Irene’s shoulders and leaned 
to her in one of her rare caresses. “ I am glad you 
told me. No one else, not even Day, could have done 
it with so little hurt, for you know all about it. It 
must have been hard for you. And Irene,” her 
breath came a little shorter; “ would you be willing 
to write to Wade, just a little, short note, telling him 
about it and asking him to tell the others? I think 
that you and he together can make them understand.” 

Then she closed the door upon her friend and went 
back to face it out, alone. 



'< IRENE HAD THE TACT TO RISE WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD.” 

[. Page 148. 














































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V ' 






SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


149 


CHAPTER TWELVE 

F AITHFUL to Sidney's request, Irene did write 
just a note to Wade Winthrop; together, they 
did make the others understand, as was proved by 
the bundle of letters which swamped Sidney, two days 
later, letters which brought the hot tears into her 
eyes, even while they brought consolation to her 
heart. Still more consolation came to her, however, 
by way of a brief letter from Rob, to whom Day had 
written in hot wrath, the very night Irene had brought 
the tidings. 

“ Dear Sidney," he wrote laconically; “ so we've 
both of us been knocked out of the race. Some day, 
we may get to be thankful; but doesn't it hurt in- 
fernally now? Yours always, Rob." 

And Sidney, when she went to bed, that night, 
tucked the note under her pillow. Rob had been 
through it, though from another cause, and he under- 
stood. Even Wade's flowers were a failure by com- 
parison, and it was without the slightest twinge of 
conscience that she made them over to Irene, all but 
one single dark red rose which she wore until it fell 
to pieces. Later, smiling to herself, she deliberately 
ate up the fallen petals. Wade's sympathy was true 
and welcome; therefore she would assimilate it in 
any way which lay at hand. 


150 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


If Sidney had been the sort of girl to enjoy sensa- 
tions, she would have had her fill of them, the next 
few days. The choice of freshman captain had become 
a veritable storm centre, around which raged the 
entire college, — the entire college, that is, which 
knows that basket ball exists and has a mission above 
sprained ankles and shrieking enthusiasm and con- 
sequent rivalries. For the first time in the history 
of the college, the honour of athletics had been 
threatened; and the athletics-loving end of the college 
rose, as a single girl, to resent the insult. It was all a 
part of the resentment that Sidney should be lionized, 
not so much as the individual, Sidney Stay re, as the 
victim of a political manoeuvre which had been so 
skilfully planned and executed that even the official 
powers, albeit indignant, were unable to prevent it. 
Sidney not only led out of chapel, the morning after 
Irene’s visit, arm in arm with the captain of the 
senior team; she spent the next week in a bower of 
sympathizing roses and violets, and she feasted at 
Boyden’s until her physical indigestion was as upset 
as her psychological one. 

Of course, it was the expectation on all sides that 
this general demonstration of hostility would force 
Agatha to resign; but, to the surprise of everybody, 
Agatha showed herself impenetrable, and sat tight 
upon the pinnacle to which she had found herself 
exalted. At first, this was the result of the inability 
of even such pointed signs of disapproval to penetrate 
her flesh to the extent of lodging in her brain. Later, 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


151 


when it really began to dawn upon her that she was 
not popular with her own team, nor with her class, 
nor even with the college, a certain stolid obstinacy 
asserted itself and joined itself to the urgent appeals 
of her faction to hold her place at any cost. She did 
hold it, held it though the irate team broke training, 
skipped practice, and showed themselves to be in all 
respects upon the very verge of mutiny. 

It would be useless to deny that Sidney had her 
hours of secret mourning, her moments of open lamen- 
tation made to Day and Irene. Those two friends, of 
all the girls she knew, she felt she could trust. She 
felt sure, unless she spoke out her woe to some one, 
she would end by betraying herself to the world at 
large. As it was, however, helped on by the expressed 
sympathy and wrath of Irene and Day, buoyed up 
by the kindness which met her upon every hand, 
Sidney succeeded in presenting a brave, bright face 
to the college world, succeeded even in resisting the 
indignant impulse to send in her resignation from the 
substitute team. Even Day advised her to this end; 
but Mrs. Leslie, overhearing, came promptly to the 
support of Sidney’s argument. It would be childish 
to withdraw entirely, Sidney maintained, when all 
the college knew how her heart was in the game, how 
she was hoping for the victory of her own class. It 
might be the part of injured dignity to cast aside 
the meagre crust bestowed upon her in place of the 
promised loaf; but Sidney read other meanings into 
the word dignity, and Mrs. Leslie, who took the matter 


152 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


to heart as much as any of the girls, agreed with 
Sidney’s reading. If Sidney were in it for herself 
alone, then let her resign at once; if she were in it, 
as she had always claimed, for the sake of her class, 
then let her remember how it had happened within 
the history of the college that some unforeseen acci- 
dent had given to a substitute the chance to win 
or lose a game. 

Then, her say once said, Mrs. Leslie departed on 
her way, leaving the girls to argue it out as they might 
choose. Nevertheless, she remembered, that night 
and for many nights to come, to send hot milk to 
Sidney’s room at bedtime. The girl was plucky, and 
she made no open moan; but, to Mrs. Leslie’s ques- 
tionings, she confessed to sleepless nights, and, half 
the time, she left her food untasted on her plate. It 
is not easy for a girl of Sidney’s sort to find herself 
cast to one side completely and through no fault of 
her own. Neither does the mere detail of bearing it 
bravely render the fact more bearable. 

Meanwhile, as a matter of course, Wade had replied 
to Irene’s note. Later, he had written again, asking 
for further news of his young cousin whose letters, 
although noncommittal, were causing him some 
anxiety. And Irene answered, fully and without 
reserve: Sidney was the pluckiest girl in all Smith 
College, the pluckiest and the brightest, though hurt 
to the quick, hurt, Irene feared, more lastingly than 
had at first appeared to any of them. She answered 
again and quite as fully, when Wade wrote to beg 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


153 


her to keep him informed of Sidney’s welfare. And 
so two or three weeks passed away, and mid-year’s 
was at hand. 

It was snowing fast, on Tuesday night, when Irene 
came in from the Wallace House where certain of her 
classmates had been holding revel. The laugh was 
still in her eyes, the smile around her lips, as she shook 
the white flakes from her shoulders and opened the 
door to go into the house. Beside the table in the hall, 
she paused to see whether the postman’s evening 
round had brought her any letters, and she gave a 
little start of pleased surprise, as she recognized the 
writing on the thick, square envelope that lay atop. 
With the briefest possible nod to her companions, she 
seized upon the letter and bore it off to her own room, 
to read it alone and at her leisure. 

Deliberately she took off her rain coat and brushed 
away the last of the snowflakes which still clung to her 
bare head ; then she drew up a chair beside the read- 
ing-lamp and opened the letter with leisurely fingers 
which bespoke a desire to make the reading last as 
long as possible. In the same leisurely fashion and 
lying far back in her chair, she unfolded the thick 
cream-coloured sheet and read the opening lines. 
Then she started up in quick attention, while her 
brows arched themselves and drew together into an 
anxious frown. 

“ My dear Miss Jessup,” the letter ran; “ I seem 
to be perpetually using you as a means of indirect 
communication with my young cousin; but the fact 


154 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


of the matter is, I shall feel a good deal easier if I have 
some one on the spot who knows how things are going 
here. 

“ Bungay is ill. The doctor says it is nothing 
serious, only a cold. He jeered at the notion of letting 
Sidney know about it. How r ever, I can’t help feeling 
anxious. The little fellow is feverish, now and then 
delirious, and he coughs almost incessantly. Quite 
incessantly he begs for Sidney, and he babbles about 
her and a ‘bear without a hair,’ whatever that may 
be, whenever he goes off his head. It all seems to me 
rather serious, though of course it may have gone on 
my nerves more than the case warrants. However, 
we both know, you and I, how Sidney adores the 
youngster, and how she would mourn, if anything 
happened and she were not here. 

“ As I say, I am probably alarmed at nothing. 
The doctor says I am, and he is the one who ought 
to know. In any case, I don’t want to alarm my aunt 
and uncle, so I haven’t talked it over much with them. 
To-night, though, I’ve been at the Argyles’, talking 
it out with Jack Blanchard. He feels as I do, that, 
if things aren’t bad by now, they may get so at al- 
most any time. Poor youngster! He looks such a 
forlorn little bundle, curled up in the blankets and 
gripping the Teddy bear you sent him. Jack went in 
to see him last night, and it broke him all up. Bungay 
has been so fond of him, you know, and now he didn’t 
take any notice of him, didn’t seem even to know him. 
It’s really pitiful to see him, Miss Jessup, with all the 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


155 


life knocked out of him. And you know what a jolly, 
irrepressible little beggar he always was. 

“ But about this letter. I was still talking with 
Jack, when Mrs. Argyle came in. She advised me 
to write to you and tell you how things are, so that, 
if we had to send for Sidney, you’d be on hand to 
brace her up a bit. And Mrs. Argyle told me to tell 
you that, if it should ever reach the point where 
Sidney had to come home, she wished you could come 
down with her and stay a few days at the Argyles’ 
house, to see Sidney through it. Day would do it, 
of course, do it gladly; but she is younger than 
Sidney is, and, in a case like this, each six months 
counts. Besides, you had a bit of similar bad times, 
last fall, and you’d know how to comfort Sidney. 
Pray God, though, it may not come to that! I’m 
sorry to throw this care upon you, and yet, I’m glad 
you’re there to take it. Yours cordially, Wade 
Winthrop.” 

Twice Irene read the letter through from end to end. 
Then, with a gesture of impatience, she pushed the 
loose hair away from her face, rose and began to pace 
the room. 

“ Poor old Sidney ! ” she said aloud at length. “ I 
thought she had about all the bad times she could 
bear; but the bad seems likely to be getting worse. 
And all I can do is to see her through it, and give her 
the lean consolation of knowing I am sorry.” 

All the next day and the next, Irene kept out of 
Sidney’s way. In a colony of fourteen hundred girls, 


156 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


this is not hard to accomplish, when the girl to be 
shunned is in another class. Nevertheless, Sidney 
had become so well acquainted with all of Irene’s 
haunts that it was only by the greatest swiftness and 
dexterity that Irene maintained her distance. Fond 
though she was of Sidney, by reason of that very 
fondness, Irene felt it was imperative, just then, that 
she should avoid Sidney’s searching eyes. Under 
their steady, comprehending gaze, she felt assured, 
she would be certain to betray her anxiety for this 
new shadow which was hanging over her unconscious 
friend. Better than that, far better, that she should 
incur the charge of fickleness, of absolute neglect. 
Accordingly, she went her way, dodging Sidney at 
every point and carefully remembering to forget that 
that very Wednesday evening was the night she had 
set aside for an all-evening call from Sidney. Even 
through the closed panels of her door, even in the 
darkness of her room, she could see the hurt astonish- 
ment in Sidney’s honest eyes as they read the men- 
dacious card asleep! pinned to the outside of the 
door. She tried to smile to herself as she pictured how, 
later on, she could show Wade’s letter to Sidney and 
join her in the laugh over the depths of perfidy to 
which their causeless alarm had driven them. 

Thursday night, it stormed again, snow with a 
howling wind which, coupled with shrieks of laughter 
from inside the room, deadened the sound of Irene’s 
tap on Sidney’s door. It seemed to the girl standing 
there, snow-soaked, blown, and crushing a slip of 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


157 


yellow paper in her hand while she waited an instant 
before repeating the knock, it seemed to Irene that 
half the household were gathered there within, hold- 
ing high carnival. Involuntarily and not by reason 
of the snow, she gave a little shiver. Then, as the 
applause obtained its encore, and the clamour sub- 
sided to a single voice, she tapped again. 

It was Day who threw open the door. 

“ Irene, you prodigal!” she said, as she dragged 
the guest inside. “ Where have you been keeping 
yourself, this age? You’re just in the nick of time. 
We’ve all been doing stunts, and Janet has brought 
down the house, doing the Dean of the Cathedral, 
the night the cat came in and climbed on the canopy 
of his chair. Do it once more, Janet. I’m dying to 
have Irene hear.” 

The chorus broke out again, and Janet yielded to its 
urging. To Irene, awaiting the interminable mono- 
logue’s end, it seemed a new and unfamiliar Janet, as 
if possessed by the spirit of the storm outside. Roused 
by the wind, fired by the unwonted applause, she was 
glowing like a red-hot coal and as magnetic as any 
actor who ever faced the footlights. In the vague 
fashion in which one, held by a dominant idea, yet 
notices all sorts of irrelevant details, Irene took note 
of the circle of admiring girls, of Sidney’s honest 
pleasure and of Day’s delight that, at length, their 
friend was showing a hint of her really attractive 
self. Then, as Janet once more dropped down into 
her corner amid a perfect whirlwind of applause, 


158 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Irene clenched her hand upon the yellow paper, 
holding Wade’s brief message, — 

“Maurice not as well. Best bring Sidney down 
with you in the morning.” 

Strange to say, to Irene’s mind, the most ominous 
thing in all that message was Wade’s use of the name 
Maurice , so rarely associated with little Bungay. 

“ Sidney.” In the stillness which followed the 
applause, Irene’s voice sounded curiously abrupt, yet 
so gentle that every eye in the room sought her face, 
as if to ask its meaning. “ Do you mind coming 
into Helen’s room for a minute? There’s something I 
really must talk over with you.” 

In the gray snowy dawn of the next day, they 
started southward. Day saw them off alone, for 
Sidney had begged her to ask the others not to come 
down even to say good-bye in the hall below. At 
noon Wade met them in New York, and his face was 
grave, though smiling. 

“ No change,” he said at once as he met Sidney’s 
appealing eyes. “ The doctor says it is worth every- 
thing, the way he has held out through the night.” 
But, behind Sidney’s back he glanced at Irene, and 
Irene read little courage in the glance. 

The Argyle horses, waiting at the station, were 
famous in the city; yet it seemed to Sidney, watching 
the familiar streets with hot, dry eyes, that they 
crawled with the pace of aged turtles. She was 
vaguely conscious that Wade and Irene were talking, 
that they both addressed remarks to her now and then, 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


159 


addressed them, and then mercifully resumed their 
talk without awaiting the answer which she tried in 
vain to force from her stiffened lips. All she wished 
was to be let alone, and to be allowed to get on the 
box and whip, whip those lagging horses. 

Whether the carriage stopped at the door, or 
whether it ever reached the door at all, she never 
knew. She only was aware that the carriage, with 
Wade and Irene inside, was turning the corner towards 
the Argyles’ house, and that she was standing in the 
dear old hall at home, her head upon her mother’s 
shoulder. 

“ Don’t cry so, Sidney,” her mother said at length. 
“ You mustn’t, child.” 

“ Bungay? ” There was infinite appeal in the short 
question. 

“ No worse than he was, last night. His pulse, if 
anything, is stronger. When you are ready, dear.” 

But Sidney’s hat and coat were on a chair by now, 
her tears gulped back, or brushed aside. 

“ I am ready,” she said bravely. “ Shall we go? ” 

However, on the threshold, her bravery wellnigh 
failed her. Was this Bungay, the sturdy, the irre- 
pressible, this gray-white, weazen, wide-eyed child 
who looked so tiny in the great, white bed, who lay 
there, heedless of her coming, and babbled things 
about her. 


“There 'peared a bear, 
Without a hair, 

One lovely summer morning. 


160 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Did you write it up on a card, Sidney? ’Cause you 
might get homesick without me, you know, and it 
would berember me of you. I did berember you. I 
used to have a sister, you see. Her name was Sidney, 
and we went to Auntie Jack’s house together, and 
saw the nice man that prinked his necktie. And then 
we played squat tag. But she’s gone away, and I get 
so homesick for her. No; I don’t want the twins. I 
want my sister Sidney, the one I made the poem to 
keep from being homesick. And I made another one, 
one day. It had a lion in it, and a coon, and I thought 
maybe, if I could think it up again and send it to her, 
she’d berember me, and — come back — to — see — 
me.” The voice trailed off into silence. 

“ Bungay dear,” Sidney said softly. 

The little figure rolled over in the bed, the eyes 
sought Sidney’s eyes, and the weazen face took on a 
smile of recognition and of welcome. 

“ Hullo, Sidney!” the voice said feebly. “ You 
berembered me and came back; didn’t you? ” 

“ Yes, dear.” 

“ And you won’t go off to leave me any more? ” 

“ Not if you want me, dear,” she promised. 

“ All right.” The voice lost its feverish insistence 
and grew drowsy. “ Some day, I’ll make a better 
poem to pay you up for coming home.” 

All the rest of that day and all of the night which 
followed it, remained for ever branded, scorched into 
the very fabric of Sidney’s life. There was nothing to 
do. The nurses were omnipresent, and the doctor 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


161 


came at intervals to hold low-voiced conferences with 
them, conferences which drove Sidney to the verge of 
frenzy. The chart on the bed-head went up, went 
down, its humped-up lines reminding Sidney of a 
profile map of the Andes she once had seen in a shop 
window. She tried to hold her mind steady; but it 
went leaping off into the future, dodging to and fro 
among all sorts of hideous details, then leaping back 
again upon the one fixed, constant question: what 
would life be like, without any Bungay? 

“ Sidney.” The dawn was once more graying the 
room, when her father's low voice brought her mind 
back once more to the place where she was sitting. 
“ You can do nothing here now. I will call you 
when Bungay stirs, and I want you to go away to 
rest.” 

“ Not to bed? ” she asked, in such evident terror 
at the thought that her father relented. 

“ Not if you'd rather not. There's a good fire in 
the library, dear. Lie down on the couch there, until 
I call you.” 

The dancing flames upon the hearth seemed to 
Sidney to be leaping up, one by one, to ask her the 
old question which as yet she could not answer, 
could never answer until time should bury the ques- 
tion in the fact. She lay down obediently, obediently 
she closed her eyes; but she could not shut out 
Bungay's face, the unfamiliar, white little Bungay 
she had never seen until the day before. And how? 
And why? And why again? And then, all questions 


162 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


left unanswered, she fell into a lethargy of sheer 
exhaustion. 

It was the gray noon of another snowy day, when 
she wakened with a sudden start, to find Wade and 
Irene seated by the purring fire. As she struggled to 
throw off the last of her ugly dreams, she was trying 
hard to see their faces, trying to read in them some 
tidings from the room overhead; but Wade, hearing 
her stir, forestalled her effort. 

“ Steady, Sidney,” he said instantly. “ He’s 
better, and the doctor says he’s coming through all 
right.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


163 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

"YOU want? ” the maid observed tentatively at 

J- length, when her patience was exhausted. 

With a jerk, the stranger recalled his errant, vacant 
gaze; with a snap, he shut his dangling lower jaw 
and made a snatch at his hat. 

“ Of course,” he assented blandly, but in an accent 
so foreign to the ears of the maid that she incon- 
tinently giggled, then turned the giggle to a cough. 

“ You wished to see — ? ” she observed, still ten- 
tatively. 

“ Oh, yes. Rather!” The stranger fumbled about 
for an eyeglass which hung from a species of black 
cable encircling his neck. “ Is Miss Argyle at home? ” 
he demanded, when it was found and in position. 

“ Miss Argyle? ” 

“ Yes. Miss Day Argyle.” 

“ There’s no such person living here.” 

The stranger fixed his glass upon her in grave 
rebuke. 

“ Oh, but you’re sure to be mistaken,” he said. 
“ I know she is here. She really must be, you 
know.” 

“ But she isn’t,” the maid protested a little tartly. 

The stranger felt in a succession of pockets, drew 


164 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


out a shining coin and held it up before the astonished 
maid. 

“ Think again,” he bade her persuasively. 

“ Sir-r! ” 

The stranger dodged at the broad and irate brogue 
which assailed his ears. In his confusion, he dropped 
his glass. 

“ I want Miss Argyle, you know, Miss Day Argyle,” 
he continued to protest. 

“ But I tell you she isn’t here.” Again indignation 
brought into evidence the brogue. 

“ Isn’t this Smith College? ” he demanded. 

“ The President’s house. Yes.” 

“ Then she is here. She wrote and told me that 
she was, you know. I’ll come in and wait a bit, while 
you find her. She may be out at play.” 

Light dawned. 

“ You mean she’s one of the young ladies? ” the 
maid asked suddenly. 

“ She — Miss Argyle — is a young lady,” he made 
guarded admission. 

“ And she’s here in college? ” 

“ That’s what I told you,” he reiterated petulantly. 
“ Here is my card.” As if doubtful of the extent of 
the maid’s education, he raised himself on tiptoe to 
look over her shoulder and read it aloud. 11 Lord 
Axmuthy. That’s me.” 

The maid had lived too long in a republic to stand 
in awe of lords. With disconcerting suddenness, she 
flipped the card back into his Lordship’s hand; then 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


165 


she pointed over her right shoulder towards the next 
building. 

“ Go over to the Registrar’s office,” she bade him. 

Lord Axmuthy made prompt, yet feeble, protest. 

“ But I don’t want the Registrar. I’m not going 
to get married, you know, or born, or anything of 
that sort,” he assured her plaintively. “ I only want 
to call upon Miss Day Argyle.” 

“ You’ll get her in there,” the maid told him. 
Then she slammed the door in his face. 

Left alone, Lord Axmuthy fell to communing with 
himself aloud, and his communing held in its note 
more than a trace of his former plaintiveness. 

“ Funny place, this! You’d think, to look at it, 
that there were girls enough about, all with their 
hats off and their greatcoats unbuttoned, too, by 
Jove. You’d think they’d freeze, you know.” He 
chafed his own ears at the thought. “ There are girls 
by the dozen, passing, and they can’t seem to pick 
out the one I want at all. Queer thing, that! I could, 
if I lived here; I’d know her by the tartan skirt she 
always wore, outdoors. I wonder if I’d best go over 
to the Registrar. It might help, you know; and, on 
the other hand, it might make me trouble, later on. 
I can’t see why a Registrar should be of use in a thing 
like this; but it seems the only way to do. I can’t 
well stop here on these front steps, all day, you know.” 
And, peering near-sightedly about him from above the 
furry collar of his coat, Lord Axmuthy descended the 
Presidential steps and betook himself, according to 


166 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


direction, towards the end door in the building just 
across the drive. 

Once inside the door marked with its great white 
plate Registrar , he advanced upon the long desk 
which bars the room, and made patient iteration of 
his former question. 

“ I say, you know, is Miss Argyle at home? ” 

The Registrar was bending above her private desk 
in the corner by the window. At the strange voice 
and stranger accent, she turned and gazed at the 
speaker abstractedly for a moment, as if she were 
an entomologist and he some new and curious sort 
of beetle. 

Lord Axmuthy had grown impatient of gazings by 
now. His impatience showed itself in his futile 
fumbling in divers pockets. The fumbling, although 
obviously impeded by the thickness of his gloves, 
at length resulted in a card and a bit of gold which 
Lord Axmuthy placed upon the long desk before him. 
Then he sought about for his glass, stuck the glass in 
his eye and gazed up at the Registrar appealingly. 

“ Whom did you say? ” she was demanding. 

“ Miss Argyle. Miss Day Argyle.” 

The Registrar was not supposed to deal in nick- 
names. 

“ Miss Aurora Argyle of Naught-Blank? ” she asked 
Impassively . 

Lord Axmuthy shook his head with a violence which 
dislodged the glass. 

“ Oh, no; not in the least,” he made loyal protest. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


16 ? 


“ I assure you she is very nice indeed. In fact, she's 
quite too young to be anything else." 

The Registrar, dropping her handkerchief, stooped 
down behind the desk to pick it up. Lord Axmuthy, 
watching, made a chivalric snatch at the desk which 
rose like a barricade between them. Then he stuck 
into his mouth, gloves and all, the tips of his bruised 
fingers. 

“ Really, it's so very hard," he offered explanation, 
around the stopper formed by his finger ends. 

“ I think," the Registrar spoke slowly, testing her 
voice with every word; “ I think you must mean 
Miss Aurora Argyle. You will find her at the Leslie 
house." 

“ Yes, that's the very thing! " Lord Axmuthy re- 
moved the fingers to give passage to his pleasure. 
“ I knew the Leslies were here, too. Young Leslie 
is my secretary. He attends to this sort of thing 
generally; but I left him behind with the boxes. 
Do you know if she's at home? " 

Once more the Registrar turned upon him her gaze 
of perplexity. 

“ Perhaps you would" like to telephone her, and 
find out," she offered suggestion. 

“ Pm sure you're very kind." As he spoke, Lord 
Axmuthy 's two hands swept towards her across the 
barricade of desk. 

“ What is that? " she asked, in not unnatural sur- 
prise. 

“ That is my card; I'm Lord Axmuthy, you see. 


168 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


That’s come up since I went home, though. When I 
was here before, I was only Sir George Porteous, for 
my late uncle hadn’t died then,” Lord Axmuthy 
made prolix explanation. “ The other is your fee.” 

“ But there is no fee,” the Registrar made explana- 
tion in her turn. 

Lifting his bent forefinger, Lord Axmuthy addressed 
her as he might have addressed a refractory milk- 
maid. 

“ Tut! Tut!” he said. Then he added, with a 
fresh access of dignity, “ Where is the telephone? ” 

It proved to be upon the wall, just inside the door- 
way of the inner office. The Registrar left him hang- 
ing with one hand to the transmitter, as if he feared 
it might escape him, and returned to her desk in the 
corner. An instant later, Lord Axmuthy, the receiver 
squeezed against his ear and his face wreathed in 
smiles, came cautiously around the jamb of the 
door. 

“ Ripping! Oh, ripping! ” he exclaimed too eagerly 
to modulate his accents to the limits of the room. 
“ There are two chaps talking on the wire, and I can 
hear them. One of them just asked the other if she 
could borrow her pet — Eh? What? Are you talk- 
ing to me? Are you Miss Day Argyle? You want 
me to get off this wire? But I can’t; I’m waiting to 
talk to Miss Day Ar — Eh? You want to borrow 
my — I don’t wear such things, you know. An 
Englishman never does. No; I won’t get off till you 
go and tell Miss Day Argyle I’m here. I want to talk 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


169 


to her, not you. No; I don’t want to talk to you, 
you know. You’re not the chap I want.” 

“ Lord Axmuthy,” the Registrar stood at his elbow, 
speaking with a gentle quiet which seemed to be the 
cloak for some deep emotion; “ I think, if you don’t 
mind, I’ll call up Miss Argyle for you.” 

Lord Axmuthy, his lower jaw sagging until his 
mouth was wide ajar, his stiff hat pushed far back on 
his head, and a few spiky locks dangling across his 
brow, turned to face her blankly, the receiver still 
pressed against his ear. Suddenly his face grew 
luminous once more. 

“You do want to talk to me? Are you Miss 
Argyle? Miss who? I can’t seem to catch what you 
say; but, if you’re Miss Argyle, it’s all right. I’m 
glad to see you. I say, how’s your brother’s leg? 
Your — brother’s — leg f Leg f Lame leg? Don’t 
know what I mean? Aren’t you Miss Argyle? Who 
are you, then? Why the deuce didn’t you say so 
at the first, then, and not make me all this trouble? ” 

“ Lord Axmuthy,” this time, the Registrar’s hand 
shut upon his, as it held the receiver in a grasp which 
was fast becoming irate; “ I think, perhaps, you 
aren’t used to our American telephoning. You said 
you were from England, and — and it is quite different 
there. If you will go out into the main office, I will 
call up Miss Argyle for you and make the appoint- 
ment for you to go to see her.” And dexterously she 
steered Lord Axmuthy through the open doorway 
and closed the door behind him. 


170 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


When, after a sufficient interval, she reappeared, 
her face was flushed, her voice unsteady, so unsteady 
that Lord Axmuthy gazed at her in ready sympathy. 

“ I hope you haven't been overdoing on my ac- 
count," he said. 

“ Not at all. And Miss Argyle is at home now. 
Take the car coming up the hill, and tell the con- 
ductor — ” 

But Lord Axmuthy had vanished around the 
corner of the hallway. 

While the Registrar was wiping her eyes, Day 
was rushing up the stairs to Mrs. Leslie's room. 

Mrs. Leslie, sewing by the window, looked up in 
surprise, as Day burst into the room upon the echo 
of her knock. It was not like carefully-trained Day 
to be so precipitate. 

“ Mother Leslie," she exploded, as she crossed the 
threshold; “ what in the world ever shall I do? Sir 
George Porteous is here! " 

“ Here! Sir George! " With a crash, Janet’s books 
fell to the floor, and she sprang up, her eyes glowing. 
“ Oh, Day, is Ronald with him? " 

“ He didn’t say. I didn't ask," Day answered 
contritely, for, in her consternation at Sir George's 
ill-timed appearing, she had lost all thought of her 
old friend, Ronald Leslie, now Sir George's secre- 
tary. 

“ I’ll ask him." Janet started for the door. 

“ Wait, Janet! He isn't in the house yet; he's 
only coming. At least, I suppose it is Sir George. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


171 


He is Lord Axmuthy; isn't he? Anyway, the de- 
scription sounded like him." 

“ That's his title. Where is he, Day? " Janet 
demanded impatiently. 

“ Down at college, apparently. Somebody just 
telephoned me from the Registrar's office, and said 
he was down there, hunting for me, and that, if I 
were at home, she would send him up here on the 
next car." 

“ And not a word of Ronald? " 

Day shook her head. 

“ There weren't so many words in all, Janet," she 
answered; “ it was mostly laugh." Then she turned 
back to Mrs. Leslie with a gesture which was really 
tragic. “ Mother Leslie," she demanded; “ whatever 
shall I do with Sir George Porteous in the face of 
fourteen hundred American senses of humour? " 

And Mrs. Leslie had the generosity to detach her 
mind from questionings in regard to her son, long 
enough to laugh and shake her head, as she made 
reply, — 

“ Day, dear, I really can't imagine." 

“ There’s the bell now!" Janet said abruptly. 
“ Oh, I do wish Maggie would hurry." 

“ Let him in, yourself, if you can't wait," Day 
suggested practically. 

“ Would you? " And then Janet departed on her 
errand, leaving Day to reflect upon the kindred 
mental traits of the English and the Anglo-Cana- 
dian. 


172 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Where is Ronald? ” Janet questioned, as the door 
swung open. 

Deliberately Lord Axmuthy turned himself about 
from his contemplation of the tail of the car just 
disappearing up the snowy street. 

“ Oh, how you startle a chap! ” he said rebukingly. 
“ I didn’t even know the door was open. I fancy you 
must be Leslie’s sister. How you’ve grown ! Are you 
quite well? ” 

“ I’m well enough,” Janet answered shortly. 
“ Lord Axmuthy, where is Ronald? ” 

“ Ronald? Oh, yes, young Leslie. He is very well.” 

“ I said where , not how .” Janet’s tone was full 
of anxious irritation. “ Is he here? ” 

Lord Axmuthy took refuge in his eyeglass. 

“ How testy you are! ” he made frank comment. 
“ I fancy it’s a habit of yours. And, you know, it 
wasn’t you at all I was going to ask for. I want to 
find Miss Day Argyle.” 

Day’s step was heard upon the stairs, and Janet 
made frantic effort to dominate the brief instant 
remaining to her, before Day’s presence should 
monopolize Lord Axmuthy’s entire attention. 

“ Where — is — Ronald? ” she urged a little stri- 
dently. 

“ Young Leslie? Oh, I left him behind, to look 
after things.” 

Janet’s voice sagged downward through a complete 
octave. 

“ Oh, Lord Axmuthy! In England? ” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


173 


Lord Axmuthy bestowed upon her a stare of wonder 
at her slowness of comprehension. 

“ Oh, no. How could I cross, without him to talk 
to people? ” he inquired. 

Day, pausing outside until the colloquy should be 
ended, reflected upon the fate of “ people,” should 
Lord Axmuthy ever be left to cross alone. Janet, 
however, paused for no reflection. 

“ Then where did you leave him? ” she asked 
shortly. 

For the space of a long moment, Lord Axmuthy 
favoured her with the blankest possible stare. Then 
he made concise reply, — 

“ The custom house.” 

“ The — what? ” 

“ The custom house. I left him there with the 
luggage. I fancy he must be having a ripping sort 
of row. I brought out no end of things, you see, and 
those customs men are so very arbitrary. Then, if 
you oppose them, or even hurry them the least bit, 
they get drastic. One of them swore at me, swore 
right before a group of English ladies that I knew.” 
Lord Axmuthy shook his head in grieved reminiscence. 
“ Really, he was very rude.” 

“ When will Ronald get here? ” Janet was making 
heroic endeavours to keep from becoming drastic 
on her own account. 

“ Oh, I couldn’t tell that, you know. You see, 
there is a great deal for him to do.” Lord Axmuthy 
set himself to enumerate by means of his gloved 


174 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


fingers. “ There are the four great boxes with all my 
clothes, and the little box that holds my evening 
things, and the portmanteaux, three of them, and 
the long box with my shooting things. They began 
with that, and they were making no end of a row 
about my guns. Of course, I couldn’t stop about and 
wait, so I left Leslie to see to it, and I came on up 
here. And, besides all that, and his boxes, there’s 
another large one that holds my riding clothes. I 
should think he couldn’t get here much before the 
day after.” 

“ Day after what? ” Janet felt her patience going 
fast. 

“ After to-morrow, you know. Or possibly the 
day after that,” Lord Axmuthy made patient ex- 
planation. “ Oh, yes! ” He lifted up a final finger. 
“ I quite forgot the case that holds the tub. Really, 
it is impossible to say just when.” 

“ Why didn’t Ronald tell us he was coming? ” 
This time, there was no attempt at patience. 

“ Oh, that’s the joke.” Lord Axmuthy felt in his 
pocket and produced a paper. “ Leslie wrote out a 
despatch to be sent by telegraph. I was to send it, 
when I left the pier; but I thought it would be a good 
joke to hand it to your mother, myself, and see her 
laugh. And now will you please be good enough to 
send some one to call Miss Day Argyle? It gets a bit 
of a bore, you know, this waiting about so long for 
nothing.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


175 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

R ONALD LESLIE did come, the day after, came, 
saw and conquered. And his conquest was less 
a consequence of his remarkable beauty than of his 
devotion to his mother, his deference to all who made 
up her household. To most men endowed with six 
feet three of perfect figure, with a proudly set head 
and a dark handsome face, Fate denies other blessings. 
In the case of Ronald Leslie, she had added a character 
as fine as it was strong, as generous in impulse as it 
was full of courtesy and grace. And Ronald, with 
all his endowments, realized no one of them, or, 
realizing, took them as things of no account. Life 
had given him too much else of interest to leave him 
to spend his days in study of himself. The girls 
studied him, however, studied him with much ap- 
proval. Nevertheless, Helen Pope gave utterance 
to the general opinion, in her reply to one of her 
sister's impetuous outbursts. 

“ Do you know," Amy said, as she turned away 
from the window where she had been watching Day 
and Ronald, as they set off for a walk; “ I forgive 
Janet Leslie for all her sins, negligences and ignorances, 
past, present and to come, just for the sake of her 
having produced a brother like that Ronald." 


176 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


But Helen glanced up from the huge crape-paper 
sunflower she was making. 

“ Yes,” she assented; “ only he is so very im- 
personal.” 

Amy picked up her books. Then she gave a little 
giggle, short, but exceedingly full of mirth. 

“ Poor old Day! ” she said. “ Don’t you suppose 
she ever has times of wishing that Lord Axmuthy were 
equally impersonal? ” 

Helen lifted up her sunflower and inspected it 
critically from every side. Then, — 

“ I’m nothing but a mere American,” she ob- 
served; “ and I suppose I haven’t a proper grasp of 
that for which a title stands. However, I’d rather 
have a plain Jim Smith than a Lord Axmuthy to play 
with, when the searchlight eye of this place is bent 
upon me. Still, I know he and Day are old friends, 
and he may have endearing traits that we wot not of.” 

“ But he also has some astounding ones that we do 
wot of,” Amy reminded her. “ All in all, including 
the title, I’ll choose Ronald Leslie, even if he is im- 
personal.” 

However, Ronald was by no means impersonal. 
It was only that his personality, as Jack Blanchard’s 
before him, was directed to his kin and his own old 
friends, to the total exclusion of any one else. He 
had come to Northampton at the behest of Lord 
Axmuthy; but he had also come there to see his 
mother and sister, the two people who went farthest 
towards the making of his world, and to renew his 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


177 


loyally-held friendship with Day Argyle and Sidney 
Stayre. The other girls, in so far as he was concerned, 
could go their ways. He treated them all alike, all 
with the same deferential courtesy he might have 
bestowed upon a lay figure from a costumer’s window, 
temporarily humanized and left standing in his 
pathway. His total indifference to their words and 
ways was so manifest as to pique even the least self- 
conscious of the girls, and, as the days went on, they 
vied with one another to win from him some token 
that they had for him separate and individual 
existences. 

Ronald was absolutely, comically unconscious 
of all this good-tempered strife and plotting going on 
around him. He was quite content to sit for hours 
in the little white rocking chair which creaked beneath 
his weight, lending a tolerant attention to the girls 
who happened in upon him, and forgetting them 
instantly when their backs were turned. In Day’s 
hours of leisure, he scoured the country at her side, 
talking eagerly of his English life, or going back to 
laugh over some old detail of the winter they had 
spent together in the Leslie home in Louis Street. 

Sidney, as yet, he had not seen. She was still 
lingering at home, tiding Bungay through the crisis 
of a convalescence which told equally upon his temper 
and upon the nerves of his next of kin. Mid-years 
had come and gone, bringing its flurry of examinations 
and its brief holiday; once more the college world 
was swinging along its normal orbit, and Rally Day 


178 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


was close at hand. Sidney had given them all 
her faithful promise to be on hand for Rally Day, 
to swell the singing of her class, to cheer on her team 
in their first public game. And, because the day of her 
return was now so near at hand, they held a solemn 
council, the three Leslies, Day and Irene Jessup, and 
decided to hold back from all their letters the fact of 
Ronald’s advent. He could meet her at the train, 
the night she arrived, and enjoy to the utmost her 
surprise. 

It was a surprise, complete and wholly joyous. 
But Amy and Helen Pope, watching Ronald as he was 
preparing to start for the train, that night, were forced 
to confess to themselves that the tall young Canadian 
was by no means always so impersonal as he had at 
first appeared. 

Lord Axmuthy, on the other hand, made no attempt 
at even a seeming impersonality. From the hour 
of his entering the office of the Registrar, he clung to 
the notion that the whole endowment and establish- 
ment of Smith College was one colossal joke designed 
solely with a view of tickling his British brain. He 
took no thought for the fact that the ticklement might 
be mutual. He merely set himself to inspect the joke 
from, every possible viewpoint, and, so far as he could 
achieve it, he dragged Day after him as showman. 
Day, however, torn in divers directions by her kindly 
wish to make his stay a pleasant one, by her real 
loyalty to a certain inherent gentlehood in her old 
friend, by her overwhelming sense of the ludicrous, 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


179 


found the days alternately unending and rushing 
past her with remorseless speed. Of Ronald she saw 
surprisingly little, for Lord Axmuthy took up her 
every spare moment, and some that she could ill 
afford to spare. In such a crisis, she longed acutely 
for the absent Sidney, since Sidney, she knew, would 
have taken her turn valiantly at the entertainment 
and enlivenment of his Lordship; but Sidney was 
as yet unavailable. Janet, even as had been her wont 
in Quebec, washed her hands of the Englishman en- 
tirely, and fled from his presence whenever he ap- 
proached. Day, who had her satellites, as every class 
president is bound to have them, promptly hit upon 
the expedient of farming out Lord Axmuthy among 
them. The system was wholly feudal, and doubtless 
it would have appealed to Lord Axmuthy’s inherited 
instincts, could she have explained it to him. Ex- 
planations, however, were obviously impossible; and 
the satellites, with many giggles, unshipped their 
burden at the earliest opportunity. Lord Axmuthy 
insisted upon observing all things, and his comments 
were as unexpectedly exotic in their phraseology as 
they were naive in their subject matter. No human 
satellite, however loyal, could be expected more than 
once to run the risk of apoplexy from suppressed 
emotion. Day shook her head over the problem, and 
shouldered her old man of the sea anew. But, after 
chapel one morning, she betook herself to Mrs. 
Leslie’s room in a rpood betwixt mirth and tears. 

“Ripping! ” Lord Vxmuthy had made too audible 


180 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


comment, from his seat in rubber row. “ Oh, ripping ! 
Look at the girls swaggering out the middle aisle in 
jolly form, and the poor old dons sidling down the 
edges like a row of crabs ! There’s one poor chap now, 
hung up on the window blinds. Why doesn’t some- 
body pick him off? Oh, this is ripping! ” He brought 
his hands together with an ecstatic fervour which 
turned all eyes upon him and upon Day, scarlet at his 
side. Then he turned to her, question in his eyes and 
on his loosely sagging jaw. “ I say,” he inquired, 
still a little more audibly than the convention of the 
place and hour decreed; “ is this the thing they call 
the American spirit, you know? ” 

“ Is what the American spirit? ” For the sake of 
example, Day’s answering murmur was wellnigh 
inaudible. 

Lord Axmuthy disregarded the example. 

“ This.” He waved his glove at the sight beneath 
him. “ To let the girls put on all the side they can, 
you know, and leave the dons to get out, as they can. 
Of course,” Lord Axmuthy added reflectively; “ with 
us, you know, the dons know things, and that may 
make some difference.” 

“ Mother Leslie,” Day’s voice came appealingly 
through the crack of the opening door; “ may I come 
in and wail my wail? ” 

“ What is it, dear? ” Mrs. Leslie looked up in some 
alarm, for wailing was not one of Day’s customary 
tricks. 

Day came in, hurled her books at the bed, and 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


181 


plumped herself down on the floor at Mrs. Leslie’s 
feet. 

“ Mother Leslie/’ she said explosively; “ there’s an 
insane asylum just the other side of Paradise. If 
you don’t want me to go there, you must ask Ronald 
to send that ape away.” 

And Mrs. Leslie understood, without another 
word. 

Next morning, the understanding bore its fruit. 

“ We’re going away, you know,” Lord Axmuthy 
announced, as preface to his diurnal visitation. 

“ Really? ” Day vainly tried to subdue the ex- 
ultation in her voice. 

“ Yes.. I knew you’d be sorry; but I find I must. 
I may come back again,” Lord Axmuthy added 
reassuringly. 

“ They say the place is at its best in July,” Day 
made crafty suggestion. 

“ Oh, no; I fancy not. The girls would all be 
wearing garden hats then, you know; and I like them 
best, this way. It’s the girls I like, you see. I don’t 
care much about the trees and offices and things,” 
Lord Axmuthy explained. 

“ But you never can half appreciate them, when 
there are so many girls about.” 

“ No; but then, you know, you do appreciate the 
girls.” With drooping jaw and sadness written on 
every line of his curiously aged countenance, Lord 
Axmuthy sat gazing at the street outside the window. 
“ Yes, I’m going,” he added after a long pause, added 


182 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


so suddenly that Day, lost in the possibilities of her 
coming release, jumped at the sound of his voice. 

“ And so you have come to say good-bye? ” she 
questioned, holding out her hand. 

Lord Axmuthy, staring stolidly at the hand, settled 
himself a bit more firmly in his chair. 

“ No; not yet. We don’t go quite at once. I 
thought I would break it to you slowly, you know, 
so you wouldn’t be startled at the last. They say 
you’re going to have a holiday with sports, and I 
thought I’d like to stop to see it. The next day will 
be the day we start. I’d like to stop on here; but 
Leslie says we’ve got some other sight-seeing to do, 
and it’s time we should be moving on.” 

Then Day understood. Understanding, she sent a 
blessing in search of the absent Ronald, for Rally Day 
was only four days off. 

After all her promises and anticipations, a perverse 
fit of delay had entered into Bungay’s convalescence, 
and it was not until the afternoon preceding Rally 
Day that Sidney found herself in the train and speed- 
ing away towards Springfield. Now that her home 
duty was at an end, her conscience at perfect rest, 
Sidney’s mind went leaping away to the college life 
once more awaiting her, to the orderly routine of 
work and recreation, to the girls so jovial, yet so 
curiously in earnest about every issue which arose. 
Stroke down the fluff of a modern college girl, and 
you find the fibre underneath, fine and tough and 
supple; and, to Sidney’s mind, the fibre was the better 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


183 


for the overlying fluff. Because a girl knew Greek 
and higher mathematics, there was no reason she 
should wear lanky skirts and spectacles with bows 
above her ears, or even the gilt hairpin which seeks 
to work a compromise with fashion. It was all alike 
dear, the frills and the fun and the grinding work; 
and Sidney, in her half-hour at Springfield, felt her 
pulses quicken, moment by moment, while she tried 
to imagine what the girls were doing, and who of them, 
besides Day and Irene, would meet her at the station. 

To her utter disappointment, the train rounded the 
curve to a station whose platform showed no vestige 
of feminine skirts, and Sidney’s face fell, as she went 
down the steps of the car. Only one man was there, 
abnormally tall, and with his hat drawn down until 
it shielded half his face. An instant later, he had 
stepped forward, hat in hand, and shut his other 
hand on Sidney’s, as it clutched the handle of her 
suitcase. 

“ Miss Peekaboo! ” he said. 

She whirled about and gazed up at him, gazed into 
an eager face with flashing dark brown eyes and 
scarlet cheeks and a short upper lip which now was 
not at all steady. The next instant, the suitcase fell 
with a bump to the platform, and her two hands 
seized upon his. But — 

“ You — blessed — old — Ronald Leslie! ” was all 
she said; all, too, she needed to say in words, for 
her face told the rest of the story. 

To the end of time, the next day spelled itself with 


184 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


the reddest sort of letters in the mind of Lord Ax- 
muthy. To be sure, he had the haziest kind of a 
notion why the twenty-second of February should 
be a day marked out for celebration, and no notion 
at all that the consequences of that day had any 
effect upon British history. He merely took it as a 
fact, a sort of boxing day that simply is, and he set 
himself to see it through to its utmost end. With 
that rugged determination uppermost in his mind, 
he sat half the morning in the chapel, lending a 
vacuous attention to a famous senator, imported for 
the purpose of stimulating in the minds of the girls 
some first-hand knowledge of the nation’s present 
issues. It was all in the day’s work; and though 
Lord Axmuthy drowsed off at times, in spite of Ron- 
ald’s chiding elbow, he came in valiantly on the 
applause which heralded the ending of the speech, came 
in so valiantly that he won all for himself a little nod 
of recognition from the gratified orator of the day. 

In the afternoon, thanks to the combined influence 
of Sidney and of Day, he occupied a chair upon the 
gymnasium floor, in the convenient nook set aside for 
the use of the substitute team. For the most part, 
he was wellnigh speechless, revolving in his British 
brain the problems involved in the full-skirted, pig- 
tailed figures so aimlessly bent upon destroying them- 
selves and each other in connection with a flying ball. 
True, he dodged now and then, as the ball, or, worse, 
a girl, came hurtling towards him; now and then he 
repined at the uncomfortable honour thrust upon him, 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


185 


honour denied to all men but a British Lordship, and 
taking the form of a seat dangerously near the bull's- 
eye of the game. However, he sat it out manfully, 
his glass in his eye and his hands clasped about the 
waist of the huge and dilapidated doll which serves 
as mascot, now thrust into his keeping by some un- 
known hand. 

It was at the morning rally, however, that Lord 
Axmuthy's enthusiasm overmastered him completely. 
Seated in the front rank of spectators in the southern 
gallery of the gymnasium, totally heedless of the crowd 
which buzzed and surged about him, his hair tousled 
and his mouth agape, Lord Axmuthy sat motionless, 
his eyes glued to the floor beneath. In each of the 
four corners rose a pyramid of girls, girls costumed 
in the colours of their classes, scarlet and purple, 
leaf-green and vivid yellow. At the point of each 
pyramid stood the leader of the singing, her white 
baton trailing with her colours. The pyramids 
rose, tier on tier of gay robes and gayer faces, until 
they topped themselves with a fringe of skirts hang- 
ing from the gallery edge above. And, in obedience 
to the bright-tipped batons, class after class burst 
out into songs. They sang by turns, sang to them- 
selves, to each other, to the college, to the faculty, 
to the teams who were to meet on that floor, a few 
hours later, sang till the walls shook, and the mytho- 
logical beasts, that hung above as ensigns of their 
classes, seemed to be waving their inanimate tails 
in mute, but appreciative, applause. 


186 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


And when, at a signal, the pyramids broke forma- 
tion and the bevy of gay costumes went swaying 
towards the stage, in kaleidoscopic blendings of the 
four vivid colours, Lord Axmuthy arose, clapping 
his hands, and gave tongue to the emotions which 
surged within his British heart. 

“ By George! ” he said. And again, “ By George! ” 
And then, “ If I hadn’t been Lord Axmuthy, you 
know, been it without my own doing, I’d have been 
an American college girl, singing like a ripping little 
angel in a tissue paper hat! ” 

And more than one of his auditors agreed with the 
wisdom of his choice. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


187 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 

P ENE’S voice preceded her knock. 

“ Sidney! Oh, Sidney Stay-re! ” 

But it was Day who called, — 

“ Come in.” 

Irene stuck her head in at the door. 

“ Oh, Day! Alone? You’re a darling; but it 
happens to be Sidney that I want, this time.” 

“ As usual,” Day responded, though wholly 
without malice, for, in Sidney’s absence, she and 
Irene had come to be the best possible friends. 

“ Yes, always. You’re only second fiddle, if you 
are class president. Where’s Sidney? ” 

“ Skating with Ronald Leslie.” Day laughed. 
“ In Paradise, in every sense.” 

“ I’d like to jerk her back to earth again, for a few 
minutes,” Irene returned. 

“ How merciless!” Day rebuked her. “ It is 
Ronald’s last afternoon, and the skating is ideal.” 

“ Why aren’t you there? ” 

Day clasped her hands demurely. 

“ I said I wasn’t feeling well enough to go out.” 
Irene laughed. 

“ Poor Day! You’ve been heroic; but your martyr- 
dom is nearly over,” she reminded her companion. 


188 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE • 


“ Yes , thank goodness! ” Day responded devoutly. 
“ I don’t mean to gossip, Irene; but it has been some- 
what of an infliction. It has been no fun to walk 
abroad, arm and arm with a Lordship of simian 
proclivities. You expect more, somehow, of Lord 
Axmuthy than you do of plain John Jones; and it is 
a corresponding disappointment, when he dashes 
your expectations to the ground, as often as the eye 
of the world is upon him.” 

“ The college owes you a debt it never can repay, 
though,” Irene assured her. “ Lord Axmuthy is 
only a condensed edition of Darwin, and it is always 
easiest to teach by demonstration before the stu- 
dents.” 

“ I realize all that. I likewise realize that I have 
been demonstrator in chief, and I don't care about 
the office. And yet,” Day’s eyes met those of Irene 
steadily, gravely; “ there isn’t a kinder boy in all 
the world than Lord Axmuthy, nor one more generous 
and loyal. Truly, Irene, he isn’t always the utter 
dunce he seems.” 

There came a little silence. Day broke it. 

“ But I really would have liked a little chance to 
play with Ronald,” she said regretfully. “ We 
used to be such good friends, and now I have hardly 
seen him at all.” 

Irene shook her head. 

“ John Bull is a born monopolist,” she said. 
“ However, it is Mr. Leslie who is in the way now. 
I want Sidney badly.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


189 


Day glanced up sharply. 

“ Anything especial? ” 

“ Very especial. Yesterday's game." 

“ Wasn't it awful? Did you ever suppose that 
Agatha — " 

“ Could make such a fool of herself," Irene sup- 
plemented bluntly. “ Well, no; not even Agatha. 
You needn't frown, Day. I know that fool isn't 
considered a pretty word; but I mean it, just the 
same. Moreover, I am not in your shoes; I don't 
owe any especial loyalty to the aforesaid bolster, 
because she is in my class. You do, so you may as 
well keep still, and allow me to do the talking. What 
I do owe your class, though, is to see that they are 
ready to play a decent game, next month." 

“ You? " 

“ Yes. I, me, myself. They have done me the 
honour, they being the freshman team, to raise a 
tempest in a teapot, and then present me with the 
teapot and request me to strain the tea. In other 
words, they've chosen me for coach." 

“ Naturally." Day yawned. “ That was a foregone 
conclusion, after yesterday, Irene. But can you do it?" 

“ Coach? " 

“No; get any results. If not, I'll use my office 
to have the game called off, see if I won't. I never 
could stand by and see our class a laughing-stock, 
a second time." Day's voice was tragic. 

Irene dropped down beside her on the wide win- 
dow seat. 


190 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ You poor little dear! But don’t take it too hard. 
It was simply awful, awful; but it was so preposter- 
ous that the girls couldn’t keep from laughing. I 
laughed, myself, wrathy as I was. Agatha is a humour- 
ist of sorts, when she takes the field.” Irene wiped 
her eyes. “ Still, I agree with you: for the credit 
of the class, it mustn’t be allowed to happen 
again.” 

“ Who can help it? ” 

“ It is going to help itself,” Irene answered grimly. 

“ How? ” 

“ It’s a secret; but it’s bound to come out SQon,” 
Irene made reflective answer. “ As long as you are 
freshman president, and supposed to be discreet — ” 

“ Thank you,” Day interposed quietly. 

“ No thanks; it’s a mere fact. Supposed to be 
discreet, there is no reason I shouldn’t tell you. 
Agatha has a mutiny on her hands; that’s all.” 

“ Mutiny? ” 

“ Exactly that. I’ve been talking it over with 
our girls and the umpires, just now. It is quite an 
unprecedented case, and we none of us see what is 
to be done about it. Agatha is captain ; she’s hanging 
to the place like grim death, and I can’t see any way 
to oust her. Meanwhile, three of the girls, Helen 
and Margaret Welch and Dorcas, have refused to 
play again, unless Agatha resigns entirely from the 
team, and Sidney is put in her place.” 

“ I-rene! ” 

“ Yes. And it must be done,” Irene said firmly. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


191 


“ Hm-m. Helen and Dorcas, both guards, and 
Margaret Welch is jumping centre. Her substitute 
is no use at all. Irene, what shall we do? It will 
cripple the team entirely.” 

“ You can’t cripple a thing that hasn’t a leg to 
stand on,” Irene responded. “ Do you wonder, 
though, that I want Sidney? ” 

“ What do you think she can do? ” 

“ She can’t. I can; at least, with the umpires and 
all the judgment of the junior team behind me. 
As protectors of the freshmen, we are bound to see 
you through this thing safely.” 

Day pondered, her eyes fixed upon the opposite 
side of the street. 

“ What do you propose to do? ” 

“ Justice,” Irene answered briefly. “ Pry Agatha 
out, even if it takes a moral derrick, and put Sidney 
in.” 

Day propounded a poser. 

“ Where will you get your derrick? ” 

Irene waved her hand. 

“ Give me till to-morrow to think it over.” 

Day propounded a second poser. 

“ And suppose Sidney refuses to be put in? ” 

“ Leave her to me.” 

“ I’m willing. I know her better than you do.” 

“ What of that? ” 

“ Merely that Sidney has a moral sense that may 
get in your way more than you expect. It is my 
belief that you’ll never get her to step into Agatha’s 


192 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


shoes, after you have had all the trouble of pulling 
them off.” 

Irene rose. 

“ Then I’ll pick her up and stick her feet into them, 
myself,” she said, with the refreshing intrepidity 
of her who knows herself to be in the right and, 
moreover, backed by the majority. “ Anyway, 
when Sidney comes in, you tell her I want her in my 
room, want her quick.” 

“ I’ll tell her. Going? Well, if you must. But, 
if you meet his Lordship coming up the street, just 
pluck him up by the hair and take him along with 
you.” And Day resumed her interrupted task. 

It was the finest sort of skating, that day; it was 
the finest sort of moonlight, that night. Paradise 
was a sheet of dazzling glass, the sky was cloudless, 
the air so dry and cold and crisp as to go to one’s 
head like wine. To Ronald Leslie, it seemed 
that the college had adjourned en masse to the ice 
sheet enclosed by the wooded slopes of Paradise, that 
each girl he met and talked to, skated better than 
the last had done. At least, it seemed so, as long as he 
stared after her; but, when he faced back to Sidney, 
he had his doubts. 

All that long afternoon, he had skated there with 
Sidney, now sweeping swiftly up the sheet of ice 
ablaze with sunshine, until their pulses tingled with 
the violent exercise, now skating slowly around the 
edges of the lake, forgetting exercise in the mere 
joy of loitering along and telling over, each to each, 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


193 


the least detail of the two years that they had been 
apart. For, just two years ago the preceding sum- 
mer, they had been rare chums, the tall Canadian and 
the downright, gay American, chums whose friendship 
had lacked all taint of sentimentality. And now, 
after two years apart, they had just two days to 
make good the gaps left in their frequent letters. 
It was small wonder, then, that they skated slowly 
and left all their speed for talking. 

“ It’s Janet's chance, to-night," Ronald said, as, 
in the fallen dusk, they skated to the nearer shore, 
and Sidney lifted one steel-shod foot and then the 
other to meet his deft fingers. “ I hate to go, to- 
morrow; but I can see it's best. Still, we've had 
this afternoon; and, Sidney — " 

And Sidney nodded, swift to interpret the little 
pause. 

As for Janet, that night, the girl blazed like the 
white, hard moonlight that lay around her. Skating 
was her native sport; her first skates had been fitted 
to her little heelless shoes, and she loved it as she 
loved the cold, crisp air. Now, to have the cold 
and the moon, the ice, and, best of all, Ronald to 
skate there with her as in the dear old days at home : 
all these filled her with a happiness which refused to 
be expressed by any normal mood of quiet. In 
Ronald's honour, she had donned, that night, her 
old white blanket coat, touched with the black and 
scarlet of the Snow Shoe Club colours; and, under 
her scarlet tuque, her eyes were glowing, her face 


194 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


lighted to more than a hint of the beauty which was 
soon to be her own. Even Ronald, large as he was 
and strong skater, could scarcely keep pace with her, 
that night; yet her eager dashes to and fro across 
the ice in no way slowed her tongue, and her chatter 
was as gay and wayward as was her progress through 
the thickening crowd of skaters. 

Then, of a sudden, as they rounded a bend in the 
bank, and came into a deserted bit of ice, her gayety 
fell from her. 

“ The last night, Ronald! ” she said, and his quick 
ear caught a little break in her voice which, only an 
instant before, had been so full of mirth. 

“ Only for now,” he told her. 

“ Yes,” she assented quaintly; “ but too many 
nows will break my heart in time. It cracked before, 
when you went away to England, the sort of crack 
one never really can mend. And now it has to go 
through it, all over again.” 

Bending down, he studied her face, turned to his 
in the white moonlight. Her cheeks were as scarlet 
as the tuque above them; but her eyes were omin- 
ously bright, as if the tears might come at any 
moment. 

“ Janet,” he asked her gravely; “ shall I give it all 
up, and take you and mother back to Quebec? Say 
the word, dear, and I’m ready.” 

“ Never! ” she made tempestuous answer. “ I 
wanted you to go; it was the best, the only thing for 
you to do.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


195 


“ But you? And mother? ” Ronald made each 
pair of words into a separate question. 

“ Mummy is happy here. You see for yourself 
how the girls adore her, how fond she is of them, how 
she adores having them about. And I truly think — 
Of course, I know she is doing it for me; but I truly 
think, brother, she is not working as hard as she did, 
all that last year at home,” Janet replied, with an 
earnest sincerity w T hich there was no gainsaying. 

Once more Ronald studied her face in the moon- 
light. 

“ And you, Janet? ” he asked then. “ What about 
yourself? ” 

Her little laugh was brave, but wholly mirthless. 

“ It’s all a means to an end, Ronald.” 

“ I know, dear; but is it worth the while? ” 

“ Yes,” she answered slowly, as if weighing the 
question for one final time. “ Yes, I think it is.” 

“ But we could go back again, you know. The 
house is only rented till the last of July. They would 
take me into the office again. They told me that, 
you remember, when I first decided to go to England.” 

Janet shook her head. 

“ Ronald, that office was killing you by inches.” 

“ I hadn’t missed any of my inches,” he assured 
her lightly. “ Besides, I have had a long vacation, 
and it’s time I went to work again.” 

If Janet had been harbouring any indecision, his 
last words would have ended it for ever. Yet, know- 
ing Ronald, she dared not dwell upon the uncon- 


196 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


scious admission he had made. Instead, she laughed 
and shook her head. 

“ You may be getting rich on your great salary, 
and you may be seeing an interesting side of life; 
but I shouldn’t call it much of a vacation to be 
expected to supply brains to a man like Lord Ax- 
muthy,” she protested. 

' “ And yet, he’s a good little chap,” Ronald de- 
fended him. 

“ Yes; but isn’t that about all you can say for 
him? ” Janet queried, with sudden malice. 

Ronald all at once grew very grave. 

“ Janet,” he said slowly ; “ when you’ve beaten about 
the world as I have done, the past two years, you’ll 
find that, when you can call a man like Axmuthy, 
with all his money and his chances to go wrong, a 
good little chap, it may be all, but it surely is a great, 
great deal. He may be funny; he may be as futile 
as you girls all say. However, in the two years we 
have been together, I never once have seen him forget 
his manhood or his honour.” 

Just as he spoke, they skated into a patch of shade 
so heavy that he could not see his sister’s face; 
but her fingers, tightening on his hand, showed that 
she understood, not alone the meaning of his words, 
but also the traits in himself which had called out 
the loyal tribute to his eccentric friend. 

They had passed the patch of shadow and come 
once more into the moonlight, when Ronald spoke 
again, spoke with his eyes searching Janet’s face. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


197 


“ Janet/’ he said; “ tell me truly, child, are you 
happy here? ” 

“ I’m happier than I was,” she answered honestly. 

“ Is that all you can say? ” 

Again there came the quaintness to her speech. 

“ Ronald, we have our fun; but we aren’t here, 
after all, for happiness,” she told him. “You have 
your care for mother and for me. You feel it, all the 
time; it takes a good deal out of you, sometimes, 
even if we appreciate it, and try to make it easy for 
you. And, in the same way, I am trying to do 
something for our father, something to keep his 
memory fresh, and his name, something to carry out 
his wishes. We both of us have a care, a work that 
we want to do. And I suppose, if we go at it right, 
we shall get our happiness out of the care and work. 
Only — ” 

“ Only it’s not so easy, when the people around you 
haven’t either care or work to fuss about? ” he 
queried. 

Her face lighted at his quick understanding of her 
unspoken phrase. Nevertheless, she corrected both 
herself and him, speaking with the greater maturity 
of her girlhood. 

“ And yet, I’m slowly coming to the conclusion 
that most people have one thing or another,” she 
confessed. “ It’s only that they have the grace to 
keep them hidden out of sight. Sometimes — ” 

“ Sometimes? ” he prompted her lagging speech. 

“ Sometimes,” she went on honestly; “ I even 


198 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


wonder if I shouldn’t have had a better time with 
myself and with the girls, if I hadn’t persisted in 
poking my purposes into everybody’s face. I haven’t 
been popular, Ronald; but,” she met his brown eyes 
bravely; “ I am not sure it wasn’t partly my own 
fault.” 

“ Mend it, then,” he advised her, with the frank- 
ness she had known and loved of old, a frankness 
which, coming from him, had never drawn an an- 
swering spark from her hot temper. 

“ I’m going to,” she said simply. 

Again came the silence, while they skated once 
and yet once more across the deserted bit of 
ice which seemed made so expressly for their confi- 
dences. 

“ I didn’t fit at first, Ronald,” Janet went on at 
length. “ I was only one, and a foreigner; for a 
Canadian is as much a foreigner down here as a Cinga- 
lese would be. I had seen Sidney and Day, and I 
supposed I knew all about American girls and Ameri- 
can ways; but I found I didn’t. They were in 
Canada, and took our ways. I was down here, and 
hung to my own. It didn’t work well, either. And, 
before I knew it, sets had formed, girls were doing 
things, and I wasn’t in any of it, except as Day took 
me by the elbow and dragged me in. And that 
made me Grossest of all, for at home, I didn’t have to 
be dragged into things; I belonged there. I couldn’t 
seem to realize that the girls, coming here, stood for 
just exactly what they showed themselves, not for 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


199 


what they had been at home. So I stood in a corner 
and glowered; and Fd have been glowering still, 
if it hadn’t been for Day’s Mr. Blanchard. He’s a 
Canadian, too, and he understands things, me in- 
cluded.” Janet laughed a little nervousty. “ All 
one afternoon, we talked together, and things have 
been better, ever since.” 

“ And now? ” Ronald queried. 

“ A great deal better. I am beginning to know 
a few of the girls, really to know them well, and I 
like them so much better than I ever supposed I 
could,” Janet made honest answer. “ Under their 
frills and furbelows, they aren’t such dunces as they 
look. At first. I thought they were just Paris dolls, 
all clothes and sawdust, and able to say ‘ Pa-pa,’ 
when you pinched them hard. I know them better 
now. We spent the holidays with the Argyles, you 
know, and Mr. Blanchard taught me a good many 
things. Then Rob took me in hand, lectured me, 
told me I must make some sort of a society, or team, 
or something, if I were going to be of any use at all ; 
told me I was selfish, trying to get everything out 
of the college and giving nothing back; that, if I 
could sing, or play basket ball, or the banjo, or act, 
it was decent to say so and let Smith have the good 
of it, in exchange for some of the good it was doing 
me. He gave me a banjo, New Year morning, and 
told me he’d give me just the year to make the club.” 

“ And shall you? ” 

Janet shut her teeth. 


200 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ I’ll do it, if it kills me,” she said. “ I’ve made up 
my mind to just one thing. As long as I’m here, 
it’s my place to amount to something, not just for 
me, or you, or even for Canada; but for the sake of 
doing a little credit to the college.” 

And Sidney, meanwhile, was in Irene’s room, 
listening to a monologue upon the selfsame theme. 
At length, however, when Irene had reached a semi- 
colon, Sidney rose to her feet. 

“ I’m sorry,” she said; “ but I just can’t do it.” 

“ Why not? ” 

“ Because it is Agatha’s place.” 

“ But she can be put out.” 

“ The girls put her there.” 

“ The girls don’t want her there, any more.” 

“ I can’t help that. She has a right to stay.” 

“ But, if she stays, you lose the best three players 
in the team.” 

“We can put in substitutes,” Sidney made tranquil 
answer. 

“ We can; but we won’t. What a bore that you 
and Agatha both play forward! If it were not for 
that, it could be arranged so easily,” Irene grumbled. 

“ I shouldn’t go in.” 

“ Not as a substitute? You’d have to.” 

“ Not to take Agatha’s place.” 

“ Then I won’t coach,” Irene threatened. 

Sidney crossed the floor and dropped down on the 
arm of Irene’s chair. 

“ Yes, you will, too; you’ll coach as nobody ever 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


201 


coached before,” she contradicted. “ It is our only 
chance, and you wouldn’t throw it over. Listen, 
Irene. If I would do this for anybody’s teasing, it 
would be for you; but I can’t do a thing of this sort, 
even for you.” 

“ And you’ll let your class disgrace itself at the big 
game? ” Irene demanded hotly. 

And Sidney answered, with some spirit, — 

“ Yes, sooner than let it disgrace itself by putting 
Agatha out of a place which is really and truly hers.” 

Two weeks later and when the big game was but 
two weeks away, Irene came up the street like a small 
brown cyclone, swept up the Leslie stairs in the same 
cyclonic fashion, and burst into the front room like 
a full-fledged tornado. 

“ Oh, Sidney! Sidney Stayre! The hand of 
Providence has opened and made a most glorious 
grab ! ” she proclaimed, as she seized Sidney and hugged 
her to her breast. Then, over her shoulder to the 
astounded Day, she added, “ I just met Dr. Akers 
in front of Seelye Hall, and Agatha Gilbert is down 
with measles.” 


202 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

T HE whistle blew sharply, and Irene stalked into 
the middle of the floor, face and voice stern 
past all recognition. 

“ Try that pass again. There is no sense at all in 
your muffing it like that.” 

The culprit smiled, with unabashed good humour. 
“ Feathers in your hair, Irene? ” she queried. 

“ There will be, if you do that thing again,” Irene 
answered shortly, for to her the present hour was one 
of serious and pressing business. “ Now watch! ” 
She took the ball in her two brown, slim hands. 
“ Hold it like this, high, as if you meant to throw it, 
and then, before they find what you are really about, 
bounce it at your back centre. So! And, Helen, 
if you muff again, Pll keep you here at work till bed- 
time. There is no excuse for that sort of thing. 
Now play! ” And Irene stepped back to the side of 
the gymnasium. 

It was only for a moment that she remained there, 
however. 

“ Foul! You blocked with your elbow, Dorcas. 
Start that once more, and be sure you never try that 
again. Dorcas! Dorcas! No shouldering! It’s 
one thing to guard, another to shoulder your opposite 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


203 


out of the way. Dorcas! Dorcas Beach! ” The 
whistle eked out Irene’s failing breath. “ If you do 
that again, I’ll say you’re disqualified for any team 
in college.” 

While Irene took the guilty Dorcas into a corner 
and proceeded to read her a lecture on careless 
blocking, the remainder of the freshman team dropped 
down on the floor, to catch breath and chatter for 
a moment, before the play began again. It was secret 
practice now, and the gymnasium was deserted, save 
for the freshmen on the floor, the irate coach, and an 
instructor or two lounging against the platform at 
the northern end. 

“ It’s a tight fit to get our training in before the 
seventeenth,” Margaret Welch remarked, as she 
tightened the ribbon on her pigtail and then gave 
an obvious and wholly bare-faced tweak at her left 
stocking. “ Sidney, I do wish you had come back to 
us a little sooner. Besides that, I am afraid Dorcas 
is getting badly rattled.” 

“ That’s two of us who are in disgrace, then,” 
Sidney made tranquil answer, while she adjusted 
the yellow kerchief which knotted the collar of her 
dark blue suit. 

“ Two? What two? ” 

“ Dorcas, and mine own sweet self, and both of 
us for blocking things. Really, though, I don’t 
worry about Dorcas; it is just for to-day, and it 
won’t last. She blundered into it, the first time, 
and then Irene terrified her into repeating the blunder 


204 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


from sheer anxiety to avoid it. Dorcas will be all 
right.” 

“ Who won’t? ” The girls bent forward, to catch 
the words of wisdom falling from the lips of their new 
captain. 

Sidney laughed. 

“ The forwards, especially the right one. No; 
I’m not going to make you hate me, by saying what 
I think.” 

“ You ought.” 

“ You’re captain.” 

“ It’s what you’re here for.” 

Sidney shook her head. 

“ It isn’t. That’s Irene’s work. It’s my place to 
watch the game, and then talk it out with her and 
see if we can plan to better it. You’re a good team, 
girls; you answer signals splendidly. I only wish 
I had had longer practice with you.” 

“ So do we,” murmured Margaret Welch, her eyes 
fixed on the rail above the platform. 

Sidney disdained the interruption. 

“ However, that was out of the question, and now 
we’ll have to get together, the best way we can. 
All is, if I make blunders, you’ll have to exercise 
what Christian patience you own, and call it Moses. 
We can’t win the game, if we try. All w*e can do is 
to keep their score as low as^we can.” 

“ What did you think of the other game, Sidney? ” 
Dorcas queried, as, with a running slide, she landed 
in the middle of the group and fell headlong over 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


205 


Sidney’s toes and into the lap of Margaret who picked 
her up, with the question, — 

“ Lecture over, Dorking? Where’s Irene? ” 

“ Talking with the Critic-in-Chief, probably de- 
vising punishment for my sins,” Dorcas replied 
impenitently. 

“ You deserve it. You’ve lost us a good half-hour 
of work, this afternoon,” Margaret assured her 
frankly. - “ What did you think of the game 
Sidney? ” 

Sidney hesitated. 

“ It seems — ” * 

“ Out with it, Sidney,” Dorcas advised her irre- 
pressibly. “ We all know you have scruples; but 
Agatha is too busy counting her measles to care 
anything about basket ball, and we’ll never tell 
tales. We all know you thought things, so let’s 
have it out.” 

“ What did you think? ” Helen urged. “ Do tell 
us, Sidney.” 

Sidney hesitated again. Then, — 

“ I thought it was disgraceful,” she said bluntly. 
There came a clamour of protests. 

“ Sidney! ” 

“ As bad as that? ” 

“ Not really? ” 

“ Why so? ” 

“ Because — I’ve gone so far, I may as well be 
honest — it was the sloppiest, most loose-jointed 
game I ever saw. You acted like a set of romps, not 


206 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


like a team. You went your own ways. Among you, 
you did some good work; but it didn’t amount to a 
row of pins, because you didn’t pay the least attention 
to each other.” Sidney warmed to her arraignment. 
“ It was a rough game, too. I could stand the 
muffing, and the missing the basket, and things like 
that; but I can’t endure the letting yourselves go 
sprawling on the floor, or getting outside the lines. 
It’s not tidy, nor even decent. It spoils the looks 
of the game, and it bumps you up for nothing, and 
it gives all the old croakers of alums a chance to say 
that basket ball isn’t a fit game for girls. Now you 
see here,” Sidney rose to her feet and stood looking 
steadily into the faces upturned to meet her gaze; 
“ I’ve played basket ball for five years; I was captain 
of our school team, and I have played everything 
from goal keeper to jumping centre. I know what 
I am talking about, and I say this : any girl who has 
brains enough to play basket ball, has also brains 
enough to know how far she can go without upsetting 
either herself or somebody else, enough to know 
where the lines are and to stop at them, instead of 
bumping into the wall beyond. As long as I am 
captain of a team, I can forgive the girl who muffs, 
or runs under a high ball; but I never, never will 
forgive the girl that sprawls about and messes up the 
game.” 

“ Amen, and yea amen!” Irene had come up, 
unobserved, and now linked her arm in that of Sidney. 
“ I’m glad to hear you girls getting a dose of doctrine. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


207 


It is all a fact, too. The three great vices of the game 
are sprawling, and rough guarding, and losing your 
grip on the ball; and every one of them is absolutely 
inexcusable. It’s just a question of paying attention 
to what you happen to be about. And I am saying this 
in earnest. You freshmen never know how much 
depends on the way you work up your game, how 
many people there are waiting to clack their tongues 
and say ‘ I told you so/ when anything goes wrong 
with any of the girls. I do know, for I have a sister 
among the old alums, and she tells me things. The 
cleaner, quicker, fairer team play you work up, the 
more you are helping on the traditions of the game, 
and the more you are silencing the croakers. More- 
over, it happens that our class — no; don't applaud. 
It's polite; but I'll forego the politeness for the sake 
of saving time — our class has broken all the odd- 
year records. We are handing on to you the record. 
See that you keep it up, for our sake and your own. 
You've been handicapped, thus far, handicapped 
badly. Now you have a captain — Don't sing to 
her. Listen ! Will you be still? — a captain who is 
able to pull you through, if you'll do your best for ten 
days more, and then trust everything to her and me. 
Now get up and go to work. You can cheer us, 
when you’ve won your game. Margaret Welch, 
put your two feet together. Now! " And the ball 
rose on its wonted arc. 

Ten days later, the heavens were weeping, and the 
back campus was a sposhy horror; but neither 


208 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


heaven-sent tears nor earth-made sposhiness could 
damp the ardour of the girls who, white frocks held 
high beneath their rain coats and bare heads glisten- 
ing with mist-drops, waded through the pools which 
surrounded the Alumnae Gymnasium. Enthusiasm 
and expectation were written upon every face; 
class colours strayed out from under every umbrella; 
snatches of song floated down from the open windows 
above, broken, every now and then, by little peals 
of laughter or a sudden clamour of cheers. Even the 
faculty, gathered upon the stage at the end of the 
building, seemed loyally to forget their sodden shoes 
in the general gayety of the scene about them. 

And it was a scene worthy of making one forget 
most evils. From end to end and from side to side, 
the upper rafters of the great building were wellnigh 
veiled from sight by the long strips of bunting which, 
starting from the running track that also serves as 
gallery, met in one common centre as if to call atten- 
tion to the fact that, just beneath the knotted 
streamers, the ball would start into play. Below the 
streamers and above the gallery level, the walls were 
covered thick with banners bearing the colours of the 
classes, decked with huge numerals and huger and 
mythologic beasts. These were the background. 
Before them were the girls, girls in black and brown 
and green, most frequently of all in white, wearing 
the colours of their classes, shrieking their class songs 
at every pause in the play, or falling into breathless 
silence, as the ball, rescued from a foul, flew basket- 


SIDNEY ’ AT COLLEGE 


209 


ward; only to burst out again in mingled groans or 
cheering, according as the ball flew in and out, 
according as they sat to east, among the freshmen, or 
west, among the sophomore ranks. The gallery was 
crammed with girls, alive with them. They ranged 
themselves in tiers, on seats, on the backs of seats, 
and, forward, on the floor where they sat with their 
heels dangling under the gallery rail until the whole 
gymnasium was fringed with hanging, parti-coloured 
skirts, with pumps, and walking-shoes, and high- 
heeled slippers. More girls filled the corners of the 
floor, huddled together in the least possible space, 
more were behind the goal posts, and a few belated 
ones were clinging to the banisters of the stairs out- 
side, willing to wait an hour, on the chance that some 
brilliant play might achieve itself within their narrow 
range of vision, and, meanwhile, applauding with 
lusty impartiality by way of echo to the clamour 
which arose within. And, on the floor itself, the 
substitute teams were huddled, each in its own 
recess midway along the floor, and before them 
stood a group of girls, linesmen and umpires and the 
like, chatting among themselves and casting, the 
while, a wary eye towards the referee who, her whistle 
at her belt, was holding conference with the Highest 
Power, in a corner which no one else dared 
enter. 

It was the rest before the second half, and the 
score, beginning bravely for the sophomores, had 
ended in a tie. 


210 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Out in the freshman dressing-room, meanwhile, 
Irene was busy with her last instructions. 

“ Remember,” she warned them; “ that, while it is 
no real disgrace for the freshmen to be beaten in a 
good, close game, it is everlasting glory to them, 
when they win. And remember this, too. No game 
is half a game that is won by the other side’s making 
many fouls. It’s their bad work, not your good; and 
there is no especial cause for thankfulness in that sort 
of thing. I’d rather you made one goal from the 
field than a dozen from their fouls; but it’s on their 
fouls that you’ve been scoring. Listen! They have 
a fine team; but Dorcas demoralized them, at the 
start. You’re doing good work, Dorcas. Keep it up, 
and, above all, keep steady. Helen, be careful in 
your passing. Don’t forget Sidney’s signals for one 
single instant. If you stand by her and play out 
the game she has planned, there is no reason you 
shouldn’t keep them tied, at least. Watch Alice. 
She’s a good captain, and, above all else, keep your 
eye on Edith Wakeley. Her high balls mean mischief. 
Now, all of you: play fair, watch Sidney, keep your 
tempers and win, if you can. If you can’t, then take 
your beating pluckily and admit that you were out- 
classed. Now go.” 

An instant later, the pattering of rubber-soled feet 
across the oaken floor announced the coming of the 
freshman team. Heads up, faces alert, they came 
trotting in and took their stand, ready for the final 
half of the best game known for growing girlhood, a 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


211 


game that, played properly, outranks every other 
for the development of poise and self-control, for 
absolute self-subordination, as well as for mere 
muscle, a game forbidden by its very essence to the 
lazy girl, or the selfish one, or to her who lacks in 
sober judgment. 

The sophomore coach, also, had been making good 
her own ten minutes of the intermission; now her 
team was steadying to her teaching. Their play was 
more united than before, with less tendency on the 
part of stars to show off their individual merits. 
There was less fidgetiness, too, and less of the rough 
play that always comes with nervousness; fouls 
were rarer, and those that occurred were wellnigh 
unavoidable. As if conscious of their superior 
strength, conscious, too, that they had imperilled 
their good record, the sophomores were settling down 
in earnest, and the former tie was fast dropping out 
of sight. 

Against them were the freshmen, plucky, steady, 
indomitable of courage, absolutely loyal to their 
captain, yet handicapped by fewer years, less 
experience, less mature judgment than their oppo- 
nents, handicapped, too, by the lateness of the 
overturn which had given them the captain they so 
desired. At their head was Sidney Stayre, eager to 
lead them to victory. Moreover, for the sake of Sidney 
Stayre as captain, not a girl would hesitate to choose 
defeat, rather than a victory at the hands of any 
other leader who might be forced upon them. But, 


212 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


all the time, the score was dropping, dropping back- 
wards from the tie that, albeit made on fouls, had 
seemed so glorious in their eager eyes. 

The sophomores had just made a goal. The referee, 
ball in hand, was stepping towards the middle of the 
floor; and Sidney raised her head, straightening her 
shoulders with a jerk. For an instant, her eyes swept 
along the freshman side of the gallery, where the girls 
in frantic chorus were singing the glories of their 
class. Then, turning slightly, her gaze swept over 
the faces of her team, a gaze so compelling that every 
pair of eyes responded to her eyes, sending back 
eager answer to her unspoken challenge. Last of 
all, she looked at Irene, standing in the doorway far 
beyond the goal, and, as she looked, the echo of Irene’s 
parting words once more sounded in her ears, — 

“ Remember that last set of passes we tried, 
Sidney. They may be your salvation, and you have 
a team that follows you like clockwork.” 

She glanced at her opposite. Two inches shorter, 
and obviously a little winded. The referee’s whistle 
had sounded; there was the pad of falling rubber 
soles, the quick, decisive spat of a hand upon 
the ball, Margaret’s spat, quicker than the other and 
more decisive. An answering spat, a double bounce, 
another pat. In the tense silence, Sidney could 
locate the ball to a nicety by these little sounds, 
without troubling herself to turn her head. Dorcas 
was guarding superbly, her cleanly, supple motions 
blocking the ball at every point, yet never once skirt- 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


213 


ing the edge of a foul. Then, with a quick skurry, 
she crossed the floor to run in behind the other 
forward, jumped high in air and caught the ball just 
as the sophomore’s hands were raised to seize it. 
Sidney, holding her breath, measured the two dis- 
tances with practised eye, then flung up her own 
arm in signal. An instant later, the ball went hurtling 
towards her; then, while the galleries held their 
breath in silence, it went hurtling onward, straight 
over the head of her opposite, to fall cleanly through 
the basket. 

And the moments were passing swiftly, and the 
two points, following on the heels of a sophomore 
foul, had once more tied the score. 

The cheering refused to be downed, this time, 
by the increasing excitement of the game. It went 
on, evenly divided between Sidney’s name and the 
numerals of the class, while the ball was being put 
in play once more; went on still, punctuated by little 
moans from across the hall, while the sophomore 
nerves once more asserted themselves and culminated 
in the crowming disgrace of a ball inadvertently 
thrown through the freshman basket. 

Then Sidney shut her teeth. The moments were 
passing fast and faster, and it was not her will to win 
out on such a count as that. Once more turning, 
she swept the faces of her team. 

The ball was again in play. Already the referee 
was stepping backward, and Margaret, yielding to her 
exultation, had failed by just one second in the 


214 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


jumping, leaving to the sophomores the ball. They 
kept it, too. Down the floor it went, bouncing, 
flying, bouncing again, nearer and nearer to the 
sophomore goal. Once Dorcas had it; once she lost 
it; then it was in the goalkeeper’s hands. The lane 
formed; the ball, poised for an instant, flew up, 
up and over, missing the basket and landing ignobly 
in a faculty lap. Sidney shook her head and shut her 
teeth askew. Not that time, perhaps; but, perhaps 
again, the next. For again the ball was drawing 
perilously near the sophomore goal. Then Dorcas, 
lithe as a little eel, light as a bit of down, leaped into 
the air so suddenly that her opposite, overtopping 
her by a good inch, had no idea of her intention 
until her brown hands had shut upon the ball. She 
bounced it once, twice, then, catching Margaret’s 
eye, she sent it flying at her with such unerring aim 
that Margaret, close on her own forward line, caught 
it in her outstretched arms. 

Then, above all the cheering, it seemed to Margaret 
Welch that she could hear the beating of her heart. 
It was her one chance of the game, for much private 
practice had assured her that she was almost sure 
to hit the basket; almost, though from that great 
distance. Almost. No other girl could do it; no 
other girl, as yet, dreamed of her skill. And it would 
be so glorious to hear the galleries ringing with her 
name. Three seconds were allowed her for her un- 
certainty. It was her one great chance; also, she 
told herself, her one great temptation. At the end 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


215 


of the second second, the ball was flying on to Sidney 
Stayre. 

And after that, the end. And after that, chaos. 
The walls did hold the racket. Sidney was not dis- 
membered. However, at her second circuit of the 
floor, borne on the shoulders of her team, she cried 
for mercy and the firm foundations of the oaken 
boards. 

“ It wasn’t my doing, girls,” she said, when she 
had regained breath and voice enough to speak. 
“ Irene planned the game, and you did all the work.” 
Then, turning suddenly, she gripped Margaret 
Welch’s hand in both of her own. “ This is the girl 
who made the record,” she added, to Margaret’s 
intense surprise. “ This time, she has outclassed 
your captain.” 

And the girls who, during her short uncertainty, 
had watched Margaret with keen understanding of her 
desire, now caught her on their shoulders and, with 
Sidney at their head, went racing down the floor. 


216 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

B UNGAY’S chiefest treasure was a battered 
xylophone; and upon it, obedient to Wade’s 
patient instructions, he hailed Sidney’s return, the 
next week, with Conquering Hero, played with a true 
martial clash, albeit in a blending of every key 
known to diatonic, chromatic and even the Chinese 
scales. 

Wade and Jack had added their share to the chorus 
of congratulations, the one in all love, the other 
beaming with honest pride in her success. Neverthe- 
less, it was Rob whose appreciation and understand- 
ing touched her most keenly, Rob who came dashing 
in upon her, the very night of his own return, his 
lips smiling widely and his clean blue eyes alight 
with happiness. 

“ Good for you, Sidney! I knew you’d win out 
and bring them through all right, once they gave 
you a chance! ” he burst out, gripping her hands in 
his, before he even halted to lay aside his overcoat. 
“ Day says it was a great old game; says it is only 
once in a parrot’s age that freshmen win, anyway. 
You don’t know how glad I am.” 

“ I inferred it from a ton or two of roses,” Sidney 
made suggestion. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


217 


“ Hang the roses! ” Rob said jovially, as he let go 
her hands long enough to slide out of his coat, then 
once more caught her right hand in his and led the 
way towards a shabby Morris chair which he had come 
to regard as his own especial property. “ There, 
athlete, down you go.” He dropped her into a seat 
beside the Morris chair which he appropriated for his 
own use. “ Don’t you believe I was wild, when Day 
wired me, that night? Crazy message, too! Being 
a girl, she wouldn’t go over her ten words; but nine 
of them were adjectives. However, I read between 
the lines, and drew my own inferences, so I shipped 
on the roses, on the chance of their being all right. 
Harvard colour, you know.” 

Sidney laughed. 

“ What about the big white one? ” she asked. 

“ That was you, only one, as you observed. The 
red ones were me, lots and lots of me, all doing homage. 
If I’d been clever, I’d have decapitated them, as 
symbol that I’d lost my head over your glory.” 
His laugh was jolly, carefree; but suddenly it went 
away and left him very grave. “ Fact is, Sidney,” 
he added; “ I know r all about it, my own self. I 
went through one such moment, a few years ago. 
The only difference is, you came out on top, and I 
didn’t.” 

Bending forward, Sidney laid her hand on his 
strong brown one, shut on the arm of the Morris 
chair. 

“ I understand it better now T , Rob,” she said. 


218 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


11 I never knew before; but now I see how it would 
hurt, all the sudden stopping. It was a cruel thing 
to happen.” 

For a moment, Rob sat silent, his blue eyes glued 
to the fire. Then, — 

“ Not only was; but is,” he offered terse correction. 

“ Don’t the years since make any difference? ” she 
asked, as appealingly as if she were demanding some 
favour for herself. 

He shook his head. 

“ Not the way you mean. They make a difference, 
for they make it stronger. At Exeter, I’d made 
my record once for all. At Harvard, it — isn’t 
fun to sit on a bench and see a game played out by 
fellows whose football isn’t as good as yours, to know 
you’ve got to sit it out for four whole seasons, per- 
fectly aware that, if your knee hadn’t gone wrong, 
you could put up as good a game as any man in the 
university. I don’t mean to make too bad a row, 
Sidney; but things like this are the ones to make 
a fellow grit his teeth and say ‘ Oh, fudge! ’ ” 

Silently, gravely, Sidney nodded at the fire. At 
last, she spoke. 

“ I really have learned a few things, this year, Rob,” 
she told him. “ You are one of them. You seem 
larger to me than you used to do, larger, and infinitely 
more plucky. And I’ve learned enough now not to 
spend my time kindly pointing out to you the things 
you can do as well as ever. Football is the one thing 
you wanted most to keep on doing, and there isn’t 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


219 


any especial consolation in the fact that you can do 
golf, instead. I’ve tried both sorts of thing, the being 
in it, and the being down and out, and I know a little 
how they both have felt to you. Not all, though, 
for I knew it was only a matter of time before I was 
in it once more; and you — ” 

“ Know it’s a matter of eternity? That’s about 
the size of it,” he said slowly, his eyes still on the 
dancing flames. Suddenly he turned himself about. 
“ I love Day better than all the rest of the world,” 
he said, with even a greater slowness than he had 
used before, a slowness which added tenfold to the 
dignity of his usual speech; “ but, of all the girls 
I have ever known, Sidney, you are the only one to 
understand this thing. That was why I put in the 
one white rose.” 

The fire snapped and crackled, and a little stick, 
burning in two, fell forward and balanced, a pair of 
tiny torches, against the smouldering backlog. 
When it was all burnt out, Rob spoke once more and 
with quite a different accent. 

“ Life isn’t all sunshine and fizz, Sidney. I’ve 
just had a three-day visit from Axmuthy and Ronald.” 

So sudden had been his transition of mood and sub- 
ject that Sidney stared back at him blankly for a 
moment. Then she burst into a laugh. 

“ We have been through it, too,” she said. “ At 
least, Day has. What did you do with him? ” 

“ With them,” Rob corrected her. 

“ Them? ” 


220 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Yes, they hunt in pairs. Axmuthy does hunt, 
too, apparently; at least, he had his shooting kit 
with him, ready to bag a bear or a redskin, if any 
came prowling about the Union.” 

“ Isn’t he preposterous? But Ronald — ” 

“ Ditto,” Rob supplemented gravely. “ Ronald 
is very strenuous.” 

Sidney shook her head at the backlog. 

“ You’re not fair to Ronald, Rob.” 

Rob balanced his stick across his more useful 
knee. 

“ I never was,” he assented placidly. “ I like him 
with my mind; but I can’t say I love him with my 
heart. He is good; but deadly, desperately dull. 
I respect and honour him fully ; I know he is a finer 
character than I can ever hope to become. Never- 
theless, down at Cambridge, I took Axmuthy on 
my own shoulders, and subcontracted Ronald over 
to relays of the other fellows; and I’m blest, Sidney, 
if I wasn’t the only one that came out alive.” 

“ Thanks!” Sidney laughed. “ I prefer Ronald, 
myself.” 

Rob started up in mock alarm. 

“To me? ” he queried. 

For the once, Sidney allowed her earnestness to 
get the better of her sense of humour. 

“ No,” she made frank answer. “ Not to you. 
I never have to explain things to you, you know.” 

Rob sank back again, with a smile of exaggerated 
content. Nevertheless, his blue eyes, now turned upon 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


221 


the fire, held in their clear depths a gleam that would 
have surprised Sidney, had she seen it. Instead, 
however, she remained intent upon her theme. 

“ But Ronald really is a splendid fellow,” she 
urged. 

“ Mayhap.” Rob cradled his stick in his crossed 
arms. “ He is a monument of all the virtues, if you 
will; but, like Bunker Hill itself, he can get to be a 
fearful bore. I do appreciate him, Sidney; but, 
again like Bunker Hill, I admire him most, taken 
at a distance.” 

Again Sidney put forth her plea. 

“ Janet couldn’t adore him, as she does, if there 
were not something in him.” 

“ You’re hitting now on my one main objection,” 
Rob assured her. “ There’s too much in him; he 
is so stuffed with goodness that there isn’t room 
for any spice. As for Janet, she doesn’t count; 
she’d adore anything Canadian. Witness Jack. How 
is Janet, anyhow? ” 

“ Arriving,” Sidney answered tersely. 

“ To-day? Here? ” 

Sidney’s laugh drove away the last of her thoughtful 
mood. She faced Rob merrily. 

“ You literal-minded collegian! ” she mocked him. 
“ This is what it means to be within the Boston 
radius. I would proceed to explain that Janet Leslie 
is slowly winning the edge of a place in Smith College.” 

“ Good! I comprehend your speech; but not 
Janet’s method, though. From all I heard, and from 


222 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


my own observations at Christmas, I thought that 
Janet was bound to go through four years of being 
an entire misfit.” 

“ So did we all. Day and I lamented over it by 
the hour, for Janet really is a whole lot nicer than she 
seems,” Sidney responded, with a loyalty akin to 
that she had just shown for Ronald. “ All fall, she 
was as cranky as possible, put her nose in the air, 
and went out of her way to impress it on the girls 
that she considered them nothing but so many 
frilly worldlings without a brain apiece. Even Day 
couldn’t hold her in things at all. Naturally, the 
girls didn’t take kindly to her; they only tolerated 
her for her mother’s sake. She has times of doing 
the same thing still ; but not so often. I have always 
imagined that Jack Blanchard gave her one or two 
heart-to-hearts, and took it out of her a little. 
She needs a dash of his plain good sense, even when 
she is at her best. Do you know,” Sidney added 
reminiscently; “ even at Grande Riviere, I used 
to wonder now and then if there might not be a 
jealous, cross-grained little streak in Janet.” 

Rob smiled at the fire, as there swept across his 
mental retina a vision of one snowy day in the old 
Quebec Historical Society, and of other days that had 
followed after. He too had had more than a small 
share of the same suspicion. 

“ I think perhaps there may be,” he admitted 
gravely. 

“ Of course,” Sidney once more became thoughtful; 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


223 


“ they had ever so much money then, and Janet 
could do- about as she pleased. Do you know,” she 
lifted her eyes to Rob; “ it’s not nearly so hard to 
be born without much money, as it is to go without 
it, once you're used to it. Things that drive Janet 
almost to a frenzy I have done, all my life, and taken 
so much as a matter of course that I've not minded 
them in the least. Janet makes the most of things, 
the best and the very most ; but, down in her heart of 
hearts, I know she considers it a personal affront that 
she can't have Day's gowns and Helen Pope's saddle 
pony.'' 

“ I wish you had them, too, Sidney,'' Rob said 
quietly, and with a brotherlike, honest regret that 
Sidney saw no reason to resent as patronage. 

“ It never seems to occur to me to want them,” 
she answered flatly. “ They are out of nty range; 
I might as well peak and pine to be queen of Abys- 
sinia with a black slave brushing off flies with a pea- 
cock’s tail. Don't misunderstand me. There are 
things I want, heaps of them; but they are the little 
things just out of reach, not the great, gorgeous 
things the rich girls have. Rob,” she bent forward, 
chin on her two doubled fists; “ would it astonish 
you very much, if I told you I didn't care to be rich, 
not rich as people use the word? I want just enough 
to keep me going as I'm going now, saving here and 
there and enjoying my extra things all the more on 
that account. But to have a lot of money — I just 
don't want it.” 


224 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Not want the flesh pots, Sidney? ” Rob queried 
banteringly. 

“ No; only the little ones I can get now and then 
for myself. We girls don’t half care for things, till 
we go without something else for the sake of getting 
them. I don’t want a million-dollar legacy; I’d 
rather feel I’d earned a two-thousand dollar income.” 
She laughed at her own eager speech. “ It’s better 
so,” she added. “ I’m not the sort to get rich, and 
it would be a wretched waste of energy for me to 
spend my days wailing for what I can’t ever get.” 

“ And Janet does? ” 

“ Ye-es, after a fashion. She frets because she 
can’t have the same sort of things the richest girls 
here do. What’s worse, she frets about her mother’s 
having the house, watches to see if the girls feel above 
her.” 

“ Do they? ” Rob queried, more for the sake of 
drawing the answering spark from Sidney than from 
any other motive. Long since, Day’s constant 
bulletins and his own observations had answered the 
question for all the Argyles. 

Sidney did flash, however. 

“ Above her! Rob Argyle, there’s not a girl in 
the house who wouldn’t be proud to carry the hem 
of her dear, dainty little train, if she’d only let us. 
Do you suppose we girls can’t tell the difference 
between a lady born and a golden calf? ” 

“ Oh, I say,” Rob made hasty protest; “ do hang 
to the tail of your own metaphor, Sidney, and not 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


225 


grab at the tail of another. Of course, any bat can 
see that Mrs. Leslie's all right. You needn't get so 
testy on the subject. But about Janet? I like the 
cantankerous little soul, in spite of myself ; I always 
did.” 

“ I know it; and you can get on with her better 
than I can do, better than Day does,” Sidney answered 
frankly. “ She'll stand a lecture from you, and get 
furious, if Day gives her so much as a hint. I sup- 
pose that's the woman of her.” 

Rob shouted at her pensive tone. 

“ Come now.; you're a woman, yourself,” he re- 
minded her. 

“ I know that. That's the reason I endure your 
lectures, yours and Jack's,” Sidney made tranquil 
response. “ As for Day, she gave me up, years ago.” 

“ Much she did! You'll please to remember that 
it's not yet two years since I dropped you into each 
other's arms,” Rob reminded her again. 

“ It was a good deed, too.” 

“ Mine always are,” Rob said complacently. “ But 
do come back to our muttons, meaning Janet. I 
wish you wouldn't be so constantly side-tracking 
the conversation, Sidney. How does she manifest 
her increased adaptability to her environment? ” 

“ Her — ? Oh, her arriving? I suspect you helped 
it on, Rob.” 

“ Another of my good deeds. How? ” 

“ By starting her with her banjo. You caught 
her on a tender point, one that we none of us were 


226 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


keen enough to discover. She is working hard at it 
and practises for hours at a time, sitting in the garret 
with the ghost, because we all get so frantic with 
the everlasting noise. She really plays quite well 
now, and she has only had a few good lessons. From 
a word or two, now and then, I discovered it was her 
heart’s desire to make the club, another year, and I 
talked it up with Irene. The leader of the club is 
junior, too, and Irene knows her well. The result 
was that Irene — she can coax anything out of any- 
body — made Janet play for her, one night in our 
room; and, a week later, she asked Day and Janet 
over to her room to make fudge, and had the club 
leader there to meet them. Janet came home on her 
toes, and has sat and plunked at the ghost most of 
the time ever since.” 

“ Good old Irene! ” Rob said approvingly. “ She’s 
the sort that generally does do things.” 

Sidney laughed. Her face was very roguish, all 
but her eyes which were thoughtful and full of girlish 
gentleness. 

“ Rob,” she said abruptly; “ it’s a sin to gossip; 
but I do tell you any number of things I ought to 
keep to myself. It’s an old trick of mine.” 

“ What now? ” 

“ Irene is coming here, next week, for a few days.” 

“ Yes, Day told me that, first off,” Rob made 
indifferent answer. “ I must say, Sidney, you have 
the mildest sort of taste in gossip.” 

“ Wait,” she bade him. “ That isn’t all, nor half.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


227 


“ What then? ” 

“ Wade,” she answered mysteriously. 

“ What the mischief has Wade — ” 

“ Everything. No; you needn’t look over your 
shoulder in that spooky fashion. Wade isn’t in the 
house.” 

“ He might come in,” Rob said bluntly. “ I don’t 
want to get caught, talking over a fellow of Wade’s 
sort. He wouldn’t like it.” 

“ You’re safe; he’s down town, gone for the whole 
evening. You needn’t worry. I wouldn’t like him 
to hear me, either; at least not yet. But I must tell 
somebody, or burst.” 

“ Tell away, then. I’d hate to be picking up the 
fragments in a bucket. Fire away! ” Rob stretched 
out his long legs to the blaze and turned his jolly 
blue eyes on Sidney’s thoughtful face. 

Rather to her own surprise, Sidney found it hard 
to begin. 

“ It isn’t now,” she said. “ It only may be, some 
day.” 

“ Isn’t what? ” 

“ Wade and Irene,” she answered lucidly. 

Rob pulled in his legs and sat up. 

“ Thunder! You don’t mean it, Sidney? ” 

Sidney retreated before his excitement. 

“ No; I don’t mean anything, really. It is only 
a maybe” 

Rob lay back again with returning placidity. 

“ Maybe be hanged! You’ve no business to startle 


228 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


a fellow’s nerves on any such count as that/’ he told 
her. 

“ No; but wait. There’s more to it than you 
think. You know, last winter, Wade wrote to Irene, 
when Bungay was so ill. I thought it was queer, at 
the time, queer he didn’t write to Day, or Mother 
Leslie; but they had just seen each other — ” 

“ When? ” 

“ Thanksgiving.” 

“Two months before; that isn’t just,” Rob com- 
mented. 

“ No; perhaps not. Anyway, he did it. And I 
discovered, just as I was coming home, that he’s 
kept on writing to her, ever since.” 

“ Good old Wade! Most likely Bungay had dis- 
turbing symptoms, and he felt she ought to know. 
What else? ” 

“ Isn’t that enough? ” 

“ Not by a long way. Myself, I write to a dozen 
girls; but you are the only one that counts. We’re 
all like that. The question is — ” 

“ Whether Irene is the one that counts? ” Sidney 
echoed, and, so simple was the friendship between 
herself and Rob that it never once occurred to her 
to notice the implication of her words. Rob noticed 
it, however; but he had the supreme good sense to 
pass it by, without a word of comment. 

“Sure! That’s the question. Mere letters don’t 
count; it’s only according to what’s in them.” 

Then Sidney played her trump card. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


229 


“ Yes; and, another thing, Irene’s invitation didn’t 
come from me.” 

* “ No; naturally not.” Rob was trained to strict 

convention. “ It came from your mother.” 

“ Yes, she wrote the letter. I told her she was a 
darling to think about it, told her, to-day; and she 
said she didn’t think of it at all till Wade suggested 
it.” 

There was a silence. Then Rob whistled long and 
loud, whistled just as the outer door swung open. 

“ That settles it,” he said. “ She’s It.” 

“ What’s the whistle, Rob? ” Wade’s voice queried 
from the hall. 

And Rob made composed reply, — 

“ I was merely whistling at you.” 


230 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
“TXTHERE is Day? ” 

▼ V Her banjo, now her almost inseparable 
comrade, under her arm, Janet paused on the thresh- 
old of the great front room. Sidney glanced up, at 
the question. 

“ Trailing Alpha. Come in; won’t you? ” 

Janet accepted the second phrase, disdained the 
first. 

“ What’s the use? ” she asked, when she was on the 
window seat, with the pillows arranged to her 
liking. 

“ Curiosity. It’s the last time Alpha takes in, 
this year.” 

“ Alpha, yes. But Phi Beta Kappa announcements 
are the great thing.” 

“ Not for me.” Sidney held her pen suspended in 
mid-air while, with her free hand, she hunted down 
a missing word in Day’s dictionary. 

Janet shook her head, with more than a trace of 
her old sanctity. 

“ It is for me. I am here to work.” 

“ So are we all, I suppose,” Sidney replied a little 
shortly. “ We don’t all of us make it our main 
theme of conversation, though.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


231 


“ But I believe in talking about one’s real pur- 
poses/’ Janet persisted. 

“ I don’t. Our actions show them, if they’re any 
purposes at all. I never could see the sense in wasting 
one’s breath over discussions of the wholly obvious. 
Being here, it is a matter of course that we’re doing 
our fair share of work. Else, we’d get dropped. 
Some of us may be, anyway, for all I know.” Sidney 
whacked her dictionary leaves about with noisy 
vehemence. 

Janet flushed. 

“ Does that mean me? ” she queried. 

“ No, you little dig! Don’t fish for compliments. 
You know you are one of the class prodigies, grinds, 
anything else you like to call it. If you keep on, you 
will be sure of Phi Beta Kappa in senior year.” 

“ Sidney! I don’t dare think about it; it takes my 
breath away. Do you honestly think so? ” 

“ Yes, if you want it.” 

“ I can think of no greater honour.” Janet clasped 
her hands across her banjo and spoke solemnly. 

“ I can, then, any number of them,” Sidney an- 
swered, with a composure which Janet found flippant 
in the extreme. “ I’d rather have Alpha, myself.” 

“ Alpha! But Phi Beta Kappa — ” 

“ Yes,” Sidney interposed. “ It is decent and dull 
and dreary. It means brains and grind; but that’s 
all. You have to have brains for Alpha, too, good, 
useful brains that you can put to all sorts of tests, 
and you also have to have a little human adaptability.” 


232 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Janet pursued her own train of thought. 

“ One is given you; one you earn/’ she observed. 

“ Exactly, and there lies the pith of the whole 
matter. In a thing of that sort, I’d rather feel the 
girls had a hand in the giving. It’s all a matter of 
win; but it just pushes it back another step or two. 
Popularity alone can’t give you Alpha, nor brains 
alone. You’ve got to have a mixture of the two, 
and no two girls need the same mixture. What’s 
more, you can never tell just what the mixture ought 
to be, for yourself or anybody else, until you blunder 
on it. That’s why I like Alpha. It takes the all- 
round girl, sometimes takes her when she least ex- 
pects it. If I hadn’t had to get this essay done before 
chapel, I’d have been out with Day, helping hunt 
down the girls and give them the cheering they 
deserve. Are you ready for chapel? Wherefore the 
banjo? ” 

“ The leader of the club, Miss — ” Janet hesitated. 

“ No posing, Janet! ” Sidney rebuked her gayly, 
as she gathered up her books. “ You know Miss 
Selwyn’s name has been on top of your mind for two 
months. It’s too late to pretend you’ve forgotten her; 
you might as well — ” Suddenly the girl cast her 
books on the bed, rested her two hands on Janet’s 
shoulders and looked straight down into Janet’s eyes. 
“ Janet child,” she said gravely; “I am the oldest 
friend you have here, older than Day, and you ought 
to let me lecture you a little bit. Don’t take things 
too much in earnest here. Have your fun, dearie. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


233 


with the rest of us, and talk about it while you’re 
having it. That’s the way the rest of us do, and we 
work all the better, after we have been frivoling. 
You act as if your fun were a disgrace. Don’t. 
We all of us are working, working as hard as we 
know how; but we have any amount of fun, in 
between scenes, and we glory in the fun. Try it your- 
self. Do stunts with the rest of us, work till you 
make the banjo club; and then, when you do make 
it, show your teeth and let us know you are per- 
fectly happy over it. Your Greek and things will 
be just as good, and the girls will like you a whole 
lot better. Cross, honey? No? All right; come 
along, for we’re most indecorously late.” And, 
with Janet at her side, she went running down the 
stairs and across the street into the back campus 
whose wide stretches of green lawn were full of 
hurrying figures bound to one focal point, the chapel. 

None the less and in spite of her haughty denial, 
Janet was more than a little cross, as she went dash- 
ing off at Sidney’s side. It was her first impression 
and her second, as well, that Sidney had presumed 
upon her two-years seniority, presumed upon the 
length of their acquaintance, in taking it on herself 
to lecture so. Her first impulse had been to draw 
away from Sidney’s touch; but this impulse she had 
smothered, as being childish, immature. Moreover, 
it had not been altogether easy to show resentment, 
with Sidney’s friendly hand upon her shoulders, 
with Sidney’s frank voice sounding in her ears. 


234 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Not even Janet in her wayward moods could 
bring herself to deny that Sidney Stayre had charm. 
Nevertheless, as Sidney dropped her hands and, 
turning, led the way down-stairs, Janet’s resentment 
came back upon her, came back to go with her across 
the sunny campus and, counting the stairs, to 
sit down beside her in the freshman seats in 
chapel. 

They were late in arriving, so late that the guardian 
at the door had barely time to allow them to cast 
aside their books and hurry to their seats, before 
she shut the door upon the luckless ones who followed 
close behind. 

Inside the chapel, and withdrawn a seat or two 
from Sidney by reason of her own resentment, 
Janet watched the familiar routine with listless eyes 
which lacked all shadow of devoutness. Mechanically 
she arose and sat, to mark the passing of the Presi- 
dent; she found the places in the books; she uttered 
her usual long-drawn and tuneful Amen at the ending 
of the prayer, but the prayer itself fell upon deaf 
ears, even as the reading before it had done. Instead, 
she was acutely, uncomfortably aware that Day, 
down in senior seats, was topped with a rampant 
and beautiful new hat which set off every atom of 
prettiness she owned; that the banjo club’s leader, 
Miss Selwyn, sat next her, guest of Day’s hostess’s 
roommate and forming with her a square party 
which, to Janet’s mental vision, justified even Day’s 
magnificent headgear. Janet was also hatted, for 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


235 


no amount of local custom could bring her Canadian 
soul to the point of considering it quite decorous 
to go bare-headed; but her hat was already in its 
second season, and its stiff little bows bore unmis- 
takably the hallmark of a Quebec hand, and that of 
Erin, not of France. And Day and Miss Selwyn had 
whispered together twice, three times, during the 
hymn. Why had Rob given her that horrid old 
banjo, after all? 

“ Thank you; no,” she said to Sidney curtly, 
as the seniors went filing out, with Day and Miss 
Selwyn in their midst. “ Fm not going to the bulletin 
room, this morning.” 

However, she went. One of the sophomores, 
meeting her in the after-chapel bedlam of the lower 
hall, told her of a note awaiting her, and so it chanced 
that Sidney, going down the steps in the side of Seelye 
Hall, discovered Janet just ahead of her. At the 
sight, Sidney had a little twinge of conscience, the 
conscience that might assail a youthful doctor 
watching a child make a wry face over one of his bitter 
pills. Janet needed just the admonition; of that 
Sidney was quite convinced. She was by no means 
so thoroughly convinced, however, that she herself 
was the one to give it. Nevertheless, no one else had 
seemed disposed to throw herself into a breach which 
was open to every thoughtful eye; and, in despair, 
Sidney had taken on herself the irksome task, for- 
getting until it was quite too late that, once upon a 
time, Janet had called her “ bossy,” and that, on 


236 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Janet’s tongue, the word had no association with a 
barnyard. With the best intentions in the world, 
and with a friendliness few girls could withstand, 
then, she had had it out with Janet, earnestly, yet 
laughing a little at her own earnestness. And Janet 
had resented it, not promptly and hotly, but with a 
growing indignation which had rendered Sidney 
uneasy. Janet’s resentment had been manifest in all 
sorts of ways : the poise of her determined little chin, 
the way she crushed the crisp green grass beneath 
her feet, the rigid silence she maintained, all the way 
across the campus, and the care she had taken to leave 
an empty seat or two between herself and Sidney. 
And now, this refusal to go together on the usual 
morning migration to the bulletin room, this rushing 
off alone, when she had plainly stated that she would 
not go: this seemed to Sidney like underlining the 
italics of her wrath. 

Nevertheless, Sidney forced herself to speak to 
Janet in her accustomed offhand tone, when she came 
upon her later, standing by the window to read her 
note, her brow puckered to a little frown. Around 
her, the buzz and chatter of many girls filled the place 
and drifted out the windows to greet the girls outside. 
Beside the long, quartered strip of panelled boarding, 
the girls clustered like swarming bees ; but the space 
by the window was comparatively empty when 
Sidney, stepping out of the thickest of the swarm 
to exchange a word with Irene, discovered Janet 
almost at her elbow. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


237 


“ Changed your mind? ” she queried, nodding as 
blithely as if no cloud lay upon Janet’s brow. 

“ Yes. I had a note,” Janet made answer 
shortly. 

“ So I observe. ’Wish I had. I hope it’s good 
news.” 

“ Good enough.” And Janet turned, pressed her 
way through the ever-thickening crowd, and left 
the room. A moment after, they saw her walking 
swiftly away across the campus. 

“ That’s a winning little dear,” Irene observed. 

“ She’s not always so bad,” Sidney made con- 
scientious reply. “ Sometimes, she can be perfectly 
fascinating.” 

“ When? ” Irene laid down the question, as she 
would have laid an insurmountable obstacle in 
Sidney’s path. 

“ When — when nothing has rubbed her the wrong 
way.” 

“ What has rubbed her the wrong way now? ” 

“ I have,” Sidney confessed. “ I took it on myself 
to give her some moral suasion, and — ” 

“ And, like all the rest of the world, she took it as 
an insult? ” Irene laughed. “ Mark my words, Sidney 
Stayre, there is no single human being in the world 
who isn’t the best possible person to administer 
moral suasion to herself. Let your neighbours alone; 
they’ll not only manufacture their own moral pills, 
but they’ll swallow them, too.” 

“ Yes, I know,” Sidney assented; “ but now and 


238 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


then I do love to hurry up the dose a little. I hate to 
see them wasting time.” 

“ Let them,” Irene advised her briefly. “ You 
don’t save their time, and you do waste your breath. 
If you must have an outlet of some sort, lecture the 
penitent sister who comes to you for sympathy ; but, 
as you value your head and ears, do let the rest alone.” 

Sidney laughed at the mock-tragic fervour of Irene’s 
tone. 

“ You’ve touched me on the point of my besetting 
sin,” she said. “ I’ve always had a notion, though, 
that my especial talent lay in salutary admonitions.” 

“ Drop it, then,” Irene said tersely. “ Have you 
all your notes? All right. Then hurry up, if we are 
to have any sort of a walk before your history.” 

The old town was basking in the Maytime sunshine 
now, and the spirit of the spring was showing itself 
on every hand. The streets lay wide and white and 
clean in the gay noon sunlight; the lawns upon either 
hand and the broad stretches of the campus were 
like crisp, soft green carpets. Above, the huge old 
elms were bursting into a foam of tender green, against 
which their massy trunks loomed large and black, 
a soft blackness as of deep-piled velvet. Among 
them, the maples, as if forgetful of their recent 
wanton gorgeousness, lifted their demure green 
bundles of thicker foliage, and an occasional ever- 
green added the mossy tone needed to throw into 
relief the paler tints of the new-born leaves. This 
was by day. By night, the greens were changed to 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


239 


dusky silver, as the full white moon of May crept 
slowly up from behind the four-spired college tower, 
to send its dainty light across the building-spotted, 
student-dotted campus. 

And all this glad and dainty beauty of the new- 
fledged summer was wrapping itself about Sidney and 
Irene, as they went tramping out the Bay State Road, 
was arching over Janet, as she trudged away alone 
across the campus, heedless of the note she was 
clutching in her hand, heedless even of her appoint- 
ment with Miss Selwyn, while she digested bit by bit 
her wrath at Sidney, digested, too, the pill which 
Sidney had bestowed upon her. Under all her crotch- 
ets and her whims and faults, Janet Leslie had an 
inherent wish to find out where the real right lay, and, 
finding out, to march towards it as swiftly as possible, 
however irksome she might find the path. Sid- 
ney’s words had opened up new avenues of thought, 
wide avenues, cutting across and across the narrow 
path she had found out for herself. She must think 
things over, things, and Sidney. For Sidney really 
did take a great deal on herself now and then. 

She was still thinking them over at noon, when 
Sidney came into the house and, a little later, up the 
garret stairs. 

Janet had fully adopted the garret as her own by 
now. Driven there first by the exigencies of her 
banjo, she had discovered great possibilities in this 
dusky retreat, where the light slanted palely in across 
the long rows of trunks, where the ghost walked 


240 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Klip! Klop! on certain stormy nights, the ghost 
who might be Jenny Lind, or else Burgoyne. Janet 
liked the ghost, for he remained hidden and silent 
by day, and only added a flavour of mystery to what 
otherwise might have been a humdrum retreat in a 
nook among the dusty, dusky trunks. And the 
garret was so quiet, so safe from interruption, whether 
one wanted to make up arrears of work, or whether 
one, as now, wished to sit and brood, chin on fists 
and elbows on knees, pondering upon the problems 
known only to girlhood, among them the great prob- 
lem of them all: how to strike a proper balance be- 
tween one’s duty to one’s neighbour and one’s 
obligation to make the very, very most of one’s self. 
Absorbed as she was in this problem, world-old, yet 
always new, she looked up resentfully at Sidney’s 
tread upon the stairs. 

Nevertheless, Sidney was bearing in her hand an 
olive branch of peace. All morning long, in the midst 
of her gay walk and talk with Irene, through the gay 
band of mote-flecked sunshine, she had heard and 
seen Janet’s resentment, and she had admitted her- 
self to be its just and lawful cause. Irene had touched 
upon her sin, her great and besetting sin. And 
Sidney, sinning, had yet the saving grace of peni- 
tence. 

All morning long, she had dwelt upon the question 
of how best to make her peace. Do what she would, 
she could not say she was sorry for her own opinion, 
or for what that opinion, spoken out, might yet do 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


241 


for Janet. And, in Janet’s present frame of mind, 
she might not welcome an apology which said, — 

“ I’m in the right of it; I’m only sorry that I let 
you know it.” 

Her face was almost as cloudy as Janet’s had been, 
when she mounted the familiar stairs. 

Day met her on the threshold, met her with an eager 
question. 

“ Have you heard the news? ” 

Sidney shook her head. 

“ Nothing especial. What? ” 

“ Janet has made Blue Pencil.” 

“ Janet ! When? Why? How? ” 

“ This morning. She had a note on the board, 
rather unofficial; but the rest will happen, this after- 
noon. Isn’t it fine? ” 

“ But I saw her there, talked to her while she was 
reading a note in the bulletin room, this morning. 
Do you suppose that was it, and she wouldn’t tell 
me? ” Sidney’s eyes and voice both showed that the 
hurt went deeper than she would have liked to admit, 
even to faithful Day. 

As was her custom, Day read her friend like an 
open, large-print page. 

“ Don’t worry, Sidney. It’s only Janet’s way,” 
she said lightly. “ Besides, it might have been another 
note.” 

“ No; it was the only one she had. I stood there, 
while she read it.” Then Sidney rallied, and forced 
the wonted briskness back into her voice. “ I didn’t 


242 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


know she had aspirations,” she added. “ Where is 
she now? ” 

“ I’m sure I don’t know. Why? ” 

“ I want to congratulate her; that’s all.” And 
Sidney departed in pursuit. 

The pursuit was long and devious. In the end, it 
led her to the garret where Janet, despondent as any 
ghost, sat enthroned amid the trunks. Before Sidney 
could put in a word, she spoke. 

“ What do you want now? ” she demanded, too 
pugnaciously for absolute politeness. 

“ Congratulations, of course; heaps of them.” 

“ On what? ” 

“ Blue Pencil.” 

“ Oh, that!” Janet looked up and her eyes, like 
her tone, were disdainful. “ I’m not sure I care for 
that,” she said coldly, and there was a heavy, falling 
emphasis upon the final word. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


243 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 

“ TANET can send herself to Coventry and take 

^ up her permanent abode there, for all I care,” 
Sidney said hotly, as soon as she was inside her own 
room once more. 

Day, writhing before her mirror in a vain effort 
to button up the back of a too starchy blouse, forgot 
her starch and her buttonholes, and faced about 
abruptly. 

“ What on earth is the matter, Sidney? ” she 
demanded, for the past year of daily intercourse had 
taught her that Sidney Stayre seldom lost her temper. 

Sidney laughed, partly at herself, partly at Day’s 
blank amazement. Even in the midst of her temper, 
she saw the ludicrousness of her own misapplied 
vigour. She laughed; then she cast on her bed the 
book she had neglected to drop, before betaking her- 
self in search of Janet, and crossed the room to Day’s 
assistance. 

“ Let me do that for you, child,” she said, as she 
deftly turned Day face about. “ You’re getting warm, 
all for nothing.” 

Day made a grimace over her shoulder. 

“ So are you,” she mocked. “ Still, you are a 
blessing of a maid, Sidney; it is one of your strong 


244 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


points. As a rule, I hate to have people handle me. 
Where did you learn the knack? ” 

“ Dressing a pair of fractious twins who were always 
lying low to find something they could make a fuss 
about. There, ma’am! You look as fresh as — as 
Dawn.” 

“ Bah! I thought better of you than that,” Day 
remonstrated, while she rummaged in her top drawer 
for a fresh white belt. Then, when the belt was 
fastened, she turned to Sidney with one of the little 
outbursts of affection which, as a rule, she reserved 
for Rob, and for Rob alone. “ Sidney, you’re a dear 
old soul! ” she said. “ This year wouldn’t have been 
much fun, without your being here to spoil me. Now 
do sit down and tell me what’s the matter with 
Janet. I’m not going to sit by and see her making 
herself obnoxious to my chiefest chum. Out with it, 
dearie! ” 

Sidney returned the caress which, however, on 
either side had been too slight for words, yet on that 
very account the more acceptable. Gush was alien 
to their natures; they seldom kissed, more seldom 
still, they cuddled. Instead, although that first year 
of theirs together in one room, the year that mars 
so many friendships, makes so few, had bound them 
with a tie which would outlast their lives, it was a 
tie which showed itself by glances of swift under- 
standing, the pressure of a hand, the turn of a head, 
the arching of an eyebrow. The other girls in the 
house, gay, demonstrative young things, made all 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


245 


manner of fun of this devotion which manifested 
itself by such tacit tokens; but Sidney and Day, 
knowing each other, trusting each other absolutely, 
could afford to turn a deaf ear to all the gibing. So 
long as each sufficed for the other’s needs, it mattered 
little what the rest of the girls said or thought. It 
was no one else’s concern at all whether they kissed 
a dozen times a year, or as many times an hour. A 
friendship such as theirs held itself apart from gossip, 
and far, far above it. 

“ About Janet? ” Sidney said at length. “ Really, 
Day, I don’t know whether I am to blame or not; 
whether Janet is obnoxious, or just my conscience.” 

“ Bother the conscience!” Day made inelegant 
protest. “ You’ve too much of the thing, Sidney; 
I always said you had, even if Rob won’t admit it. 
But Janet can be a terror, when once she begins.” 

“ Yes,” Sidney responded soberly. “ The only 
question is which of us did begin it, she or I. Some- 
body is a terror, and somebody else is a victim. The 
only trouble is that I’m not clear in my mind which is 
which.” 

“ ’Tother, probably.” Day’s very tone was full 
of comfort. “ Tell it out, Sidney. You’ll feel lots 
better, if you do; and I know Janet well enough so 
anything you say isn’t likely to make any difference 
in what I think about her.” 

Sidney dropped down upon the window seat. 

“ Day,” she said; “ you’re a tower of strength and 
a searchlight of consolation. There’s not so much 


246 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


to tell. I only gave Janet a little good advice for her 
soul’s salvation, and now she’s mad; not angry, but 
mad, madder than a March hare.” 

“ What did you say? ” Day queried, her curiosity 
overmastering her discretion, in the face of Sidney’s 
description of the irate Janet. 

And Sidney told, accurately and briefly. Then, — 

“ Sidney, you always were a darling,” Day sighed 
contentedly. “ I had made up my mind to have it 
out with her, myself, and now you’ve saved me a 
very bad half-hour.” 

“ But Janet — ” 

“ Let her get over it,” Day advised tranquilly. 
“ She will, in time. I’ve seen her before, when she 
was on the rampage.” 

“ As much as this? ” 

Day giggled, as at some sudden recollection. 

“ Ask Rob,” she said; and not another word could 
Sidney extract from her upon the subject. 

Late, that selfsame evening, the girls all sat 
huddled in an indiscriminate group upon the broad 
south veranda of the Leslie house, talking of next 
year’s plans, while they watched the fat white moon 
ride up across the cloudless sky above the elm-tops, 
or let their eyes fall upon the irregular procession of 
white-gowned figures which sauntered slowly through 
the dazzling circle made by the electric lamp a little 
farther down the street. Nearer the house, the 
shadows lay in heavy patches; but even there the 
ceaseless click of many heels betrayed that all the 


Sidney at college 


24 1 


college world was abroad, that night, revelling in the 
moonlight and in the soft, heavy air. 

In the midst of the veranda, Mrs. Leslie sat in the 
solitary chair, a fluffy bit of lace across her shoulders, 
for she had passed the term of years when a May 
evening, however prematurely warm, could drive 
her to bare neck and arms, like those of the girls who 
sat clustered at her feet. Day was beside her, one 
round, bare arm flung up across her knee; and, in the 
white light of the moon, her face showed more grave 
than was its wont, thoughtful and full of a gentleness 
which scant ly escaped being sad. 

“ It's like the water going over Niagara,” she said 
slowly. “ It never can come back again, and it knows 
its place is sure to be filled, the very instant it gets 
empty. Mother Leslie, who’ll have my room, next 
year! ” 

“ I think — ” Mrs. Leslie was beginning; but Day 
lifted her hand. 

“ No; don’t tell me her name. I don’t want to be 
thinking about her, and a name would only make 
her seem more real. I wish I could stay on in the 
dear old house.” 

“ Why can’t you? ” Janet queried prosaically, 
from her place on the lower step. 

“ Because I don’t think it would be wise,” Day 
answered, while her arm on Mrs. Leslie’s knee pressed 
down a little harder against the soft black folds of 
skirt. “ You understand me; don’t you, Mother 
Leslie? ” she went on appealingly. “ It isn’t as if it 


248 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


were outside of college, just living here, you know. 
Then I’d stay on inside this house till the end of time, 
stay on here and love it always. But it is college, 
you know; it can’t last but four years, so I think 
I really ought to move on. We were sent here to get 
broader, to see all sides of things, and I know I ought 
to do it.” 

“ All sides, even to the point of going into an invi- 
tation house? ” some one asked, from the farther 
corner of the group. 

Day raised her head, as at a direct challenge. 

“ Certainly, if I get asked,” she said. “ Why not? ” 

“ You’ll get asked fast enough,” Amy Pope pre- 
dicted glibly. “ In fact, the girls are saying you are 
more than likely to be asked to make up White Lodge.” 

“ Nonsense. And, anyway, it is too soon to tell,” 
Day answered flatly. “ Besides, with all the talk 
about the snobbishness of this house, we none of us 
will be asked to make up another one.” 

“ But if you should? ” somebody else inquired, 
from the step where Janet was sitting, her moody brow 
resting on her fingers and her eyes intently following 
the sluggish motions of a glowworm at her feet. 

“ Should what? ” 

“ Should be asked to make up a house.” 

Day laughed carelessly. 

“ I should probably smother my elation as best I 
might, and proceed to take a census of my friends.” 

“ Then you would go into one? ” 

“ After a year or so- of campus. Yes. Why not? ” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


249 


“ Day, you snob! ” 

Now and then Day cast aside her girlishness and 
spoke with the dignity of a woman grown. She did 
it now. 

“ Why, please? ” And her clear young voice domi- 
nated the group. 

“ Why, because — ” The answering voice trailed 
off into a hesitating silence. 

Day laughed. 

“ I suspect that is the fate of most of the becauses,” 
she said, with some scorn. “ They’re in the air, a 
fashionable sort of microbe; but you can’t catch one 
of them and give a good look at it, if you try.” 

Sidney bent forward suddenly, clasping her arms 
across the lap of her pale yellow skirt where it lay 
over her knee. 

“ Now you listen,” she said audaciously. “ It 
takes a freshman to settle senior concerns, and I am 
coming to Day’s rescue in the argument. Keep still, 
Helen Pope. You’ll get your turn later on. I want 
to talk.” 

“ As usual? ” Amy Pope queried flippantly. 

“ Yes. I always did love to expound,” Sidney 
replied, with unruffled calm. “ But, about the invi- 
tation houses: what on earth is the harm of them? 
The campus can’t hold us all. Nobody ever thinks 
of sulking and saying things, because girls don’t go 
on. What is the use of their saying it, when they go 
off of their own accord, in senior year, to make room 
for some of the rest of us who are trying to coerce the 


250 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Registrar to put us on, out of turn? As a rule, the 
invitation girls have had their turn. It is only fair 
to pass it on to somebody else.” 

“ Yes; but they are so clique-y,” Amy urged. 

“ If a girl is clique-y, she’d be just as clique-y in a 
circus-day mob as in a college invitation house,” 
Day answered swiftly. “ That’s the fault of the girl, 
not the house. Besides, if you come to that, go into 
any of the largest campus houses. They’re every 
one of them made up of a clique and a frazzle.” 

“ I love your English, Day,” Mrs. Leslie told her. 

“ I’m not talking English, only arguing, Mother 
Leslie,” Day responded, quite unabashed. 

Then Janet took her turn, took it without troubling 
herself to raise her head. 

“ Everybody admits that the invitation houses 
are for the rich girls, anyway.” 

“ Everybody doesn’t, then,” Day flashed back 
hotly. “ Beulah Bates is in Twenty Belmont, this 
year; she has worked her way, all through college, 
half-starved herself, they say, in freshman year, living 
on the baked stuff her father brought her, once a week, 
when he drove in to market with his farm things. Then 
the girls found out about it and gave her things to do, 
mending and shampooing and all sorts of things. 
I tell you what, girls, Smith College is a great deal 
less snobbish than it generally gets credit for being. 
It hasn’t any use for the self-help girls who shirk and 
feel above their places; but, if a girl comes who works 
clean, and laughs and makes the best of it, and isn’t 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


251 


totally a dunce, the girls will give her anything from 
Alpha to — ” 

“ Omega/’ Amy capped her solemnly, and the dis- 
cussion ended in a burst of laughter. 

“ What is your final decision, Day? ” Helen Pope 
asked teasingly at length, when the conversation was 
running quietly once more. 

Day flushed a little at the reminder held in Helen’s 
question. In the multitude of good things offered her, 
she had been finding it hard to make a choice. 

“ The Chapin,” she answered. “ We’ve southwest 
corner, looking out on the other green saplings. 
Therein lies a whole allegory.” 

“ We? ” 

Day cast upon the speaker a look of absolute and 
blank amazement. 

“ Of course,” she said. “ Do you suppose Sidney 
and I have any idea of parting company? ” 

“ But I thought you and Amy Pope — ” 

Day interposed. 

“ Amy is a darling,” she said. “ No; nothing is 
expected by way of response, my dearie. She did me 
the honour to say she was sick and tired of Helen, 
and that she’d like to trade her off for me; but Sidney 
likewise did me the honour to balk at the bargain, so 
poor Helen is still on the market. She’s a good invest- 
ment, too.” Then suddenly Day rose and stood 
drawn up to her full, girlish height. “ Listen,” she 
added slowly; “ and remember what you hear. When 
Sidney Stayre and I part company, it will be Sidney’s 


252 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


doing, not mine.” Once more she cast aside her 
gravity. “ In proof of which, I’m sleepy, and I’m 
going to bed. Come along, Sidney Stayre.” 

But Sidney, though her eyes were a little wet, 
nevertheless mutinied. 

“ Oh, Day! It is so early and so warm. How can 
you leave this glorious moonlight? ” 

Day waved her hand tragically. 

“ Bear witness, girls. It will be just as I say, and 
this is the thin edge of the wedge. Good night. I go 
alone.” 

• The talk ran on fitfully, after Day’s departure, 
fitfully and broken by long intervals of silence. Then, 
one by one, the girls arose, shook out their flattened 
skirts and wandered off to bed. At length, only Mrs. 
Leslie was left there, with Sidney by her side and 
Janet curled up on the step, her chin on her fists and 
her eyes now lifted to the fat white moon. The moon 
went behind a cloud, a housemaid came in search of 
Mrs. Leslie, and the two girls were left alone together, 
with only a few feet and, seemingly, the half a world, 
between them. In the unbroken silence, each felt 
the strain of the situation. Sidney dared not, Janet 
perversely would not, break it. And every moment 
made it seem to her less breakable. 

All that day, things had been happening in Janet’s 
brain. All that day, her clouded brow had been the 
mask of restless thoughts which had grown more 
self-accusing with the passing hours. At chapel, her 
resentment towards Sidney had seemed to her wholly 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


253 


natural, wholly justifiable. At noontime, as she 
listened to Sidney’s retreating heels upon the garret 
stairs, a little doubt had crept in and had not crept 
out again, in spite of all Janet’s efforts to dislodge it. 
By night, the little doubt had grown up and given 
birth to a whole colony of other doubts, and the 
doubts, strange to say, concerned herself, not Sidney. 

In such circumstances, many a girl would have 
sought a confidante; but not Janet. Even her mother 
had a trick of seeming too grown up, at times, to 
enter fully into questions such as these. Ronald had 
always understood; but Ronald was in Chicago with 
Lord Axmuthy, who was taking the stockyards as an 
object lesson in Americanisms in their most charac- 
teristic form. To Janet’s mind, Ronald in Chi- 
cago was vastly more remote than Ronald had been in 
England, too remote in any case to serve as confidant 
and oracle in any present crisis. Lacking Ronald, 
she gritted her teeth and fought her doubts alone, 
cropping off their heads only to have them turn and 
waggle all their tails at her, as in derision over her 
futile attempts to kill them off entirely. And yet — 
And yet — Janet’s conscience was of the New Eng- 
land species; her keen, shrewd eyes had always been 
quick to see where the real right lay. 

“ Sidney! ” 

The voice came so unexpectedly that Sidney started 
violently. Then, knowing Janet, she repressed her 
surprise. 

“ Well, dearie? ” 


254 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Janet rose and stood facing her, a dark little sil- 
houette against the white moonlight on the lawn 
beyond. 

“ I’ve been thinking things, all day; and I begin 
to know you were right about it, this morning. I was 
cross at you, very cross. You knew it at the time. 
It seemed to me you were putting your hand in where 
it didn’t belong.” 

“ Perhaps I was, dearie,” Sidney answered humbly, 
touched by Janet’s contrite confession. 

Janet stiffened her shoulders and waved her hand 
impatiently. 

“ I’m not dearie , Sidney,” she said; “ and I don’t 
care about being cuddled; at least, not by anybody 
but by mother and Ronald. It’s not my way; I 
wasn’t born so. I think we English girls aren’t. 
But I do want the girls to like me, and, for the sake 
of that, I’m glad to have your lecture, even if it did 
hurt and make me so very angry.” 

“ I’m sorry that I hurt you, de — ” Sidney caught 
the word up short. “ I oughtn’t to have done it.” 

“ Not you, perhaps; but somebody. It might as 
well have been you, you see,” Janet made answer. 
“ And, all day long, I have been thinking about it. 
I believe I agree with you a good deal. I have been 
smug, and flapped my — my what I called earnestness 
in everybody’s face, like a toreador’s flag. No wonder 
the girls turned bulls and longed to gore me. I mean 
to stop it, stop it now, and not take myself so much 
in earnest. And it seemed fairer, Sidney, to tell you 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


255 


this at once, and let you know that perhaps you had 
helped me out a little, in spite of my self.” 

Very small and slight she looked, standing there, 
silhouetted darkly against the pale moonlight 
and making her downright, unreserved confession, 
unreserved, yet, after all, so full of reservations. 
Sidney longed with all her girlish might to take a 
quick step forward and gather up the girl in her 
strong arms; yet some subtle intuition warned her 
to beware. 

“ But, after all, it’s not all my fault,” the voice 
went on. “ It’s in the blood, Sidney, the English 
blood and the Canadian. We take ourselves in earnest 
more than you American girls do; we think it right 
to show our earnestness, not bury it up under a heap 
of nonsense and of frills. Your way makes life pret- 
tier than our does, prettier, and, perhaps, a little easier 
for the people who are looking on. Still, it is contrary 
to all our notions. We think, if a girl is really 
in earnest, really bound to accomplish something 
worth the while, she should show it in her face and 
talk and — walk. And — and — it takes a little 
while to get used to the other sort of thing.” 

Sidney yielded to a second intuition, and laid her 
hand on Janet’s shoulder. 

“ I know, Janet,” she said, and both speech and 
gesture were almost masculine in their paucity of 
endearments. 

To her extreme surprise, she felt Janet’s hand shut 
hard on hers. An instant later, Janet’s head came 


256 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


against her shoulder, with a queer, strangled little 
sob. 

“ Then give me time — Sidney — and be as 
patient with — me as you can.” 

Next morning early, Sidney knocked at Irene’s 
door. 

“ Irene! ” 

Irene looked up from the letter in her hand. 

“ Sidney? Come in, child,” she said. 

Too absorbed to notice the becoming flush on 
Irene’s cheeks, Sidney came in and cast herself down 
on Irene’s bed. 

“ Irene,” she said abruptly; “ do you know, I 
begin to think we’ve none of us been quite fair to Janet 
Leslie. She doesn’t go to be so cantankerous; it is 
only a case of racial incompetence, and curable.” 

Half an hour later, Irene detached herself from 
the subject of Janet Leslie, and picked up her letter 
once more. 

“ Sidney, I have some news for you,” she said and, 
as she spoke, the flush came back into her cheeks. 
“ I’ve a letter here from your cousin, Mr. Winthrop, 
and he is coming up for Sunday.” 

“ From Wade? ” Sidney questioned blankly. 
“ Wade coming up? Why in the world didn’t he 
write to — ” But her mind, leaping forward with an 
answer to the question, made its ending wholly 
needless. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


257 


CHAPTER TWENTY 

f WISH,” Sidney spoke with weighty delibera- 
tion; “ I wish I didn’t have a cousin in the 
world.” 

This time, even the loyal Day was shocked. 

“ Sidney! What a thing to say! ” 

Sidney yielded to the rebuke, or, perhaps, to a wave 
of penitence. 

“ Oh, Wade, of course,” she admitted. “ But then, 
he’s like any brother, only nicer.” 

Day’s mind flew to Cambridge and to Rob. 

“ Doubted! ” she said. 

“ Of course. I knew you’d say that. However, 
even I do admit that Rob is an exception to most 
rules,” Sidney answered frankly. “ He and Jack 
and Wade are different. But listen. I have thirty- 
one first cousins. Most of them I’ve never seen; 
nine of them are grandmothers. Do you wonder I 
don’t feel any especial yearnings towards them? ” 

“ They’re your relations,” Day reminded her. 

Sidney laughed. 

“ That’s the Scotch of you, Day. For my part, I 
don’t love people any more because we had an ancestor 
or two in common. But that’s theory. The fact is 
that my cousin Judith — ” 


258 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Janet, in her old place beside the window, looked 
up sharply. During the past three weeks, she had 
taken up the habit of spending much of her spare 
time in the great front room to which Day, six or 
seven months before, had worked so hard to lure her. 
The past three weeks had shown that some sort of a 
change was taking place in Janet. Her classroom 
work had always been above reproach. It was holding 
its old level now, or even rising bit by bit; but she 
appeared to accomplish it much more easily than of 
yore. Heretofore, she had seemed as if weighted 
with ambition and with fear lest she let slip some 
golden opportunities. Now she did her work well, 
and then forgot the doing. Now she was merry, ir- 
responsible at times, and Janet, irresponsible, was 
second to none in magnetic charm. She brandished 
her banjo on all sides, in these latter days, serenaded 
the girls or, sitting on the stairs, picked gayly at the 
strings in the intervals of the gossip which, a month 
before, she had disdained. In the old days, she had 
practised by stealth and in the garret, burying her 
ambitions in her own heart. Now she made no secret 
of her keen desire to make the club, no secret of her 
rapture over each encouraging word vouchsafed her 
by the club’s leader, Margaretta Selwyn. 

All this did not take place at once, nor did it accom- 
plish itself by leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, that 
it was accomplishing itself, every one in the house 
was well aware. They had only to institute com- 
parison between the dumb, reluctant guest whom 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


259 


Day occasionally forced upon them, and Janet as 
they had seen her, just the night before, holding the 
parlour-ful of girls breathless with smothered and 
smothering mirth, lest they lose one syllable of her 
impersonations of the various faculty stars. Whether 
from brooding on the peculiarities of others, whether 
from some inherent talent all her own, it would be 
hard to say; but Janet had of late developed a skill 
in mimicry, a clever knack of emphasizing a phrase 
with a characteristic twang of her omnipresent 
banjo which was fast bringing her into a notoriety 
that reached far beyond the limits of the house. Such 
of the seniors as were not totally engrossed in the 
coming Hamlet, yielding to the general flavour of 
dramatic criticism which tinctures college conversa- 
tion during summer term, were watching Janet keenly. 
While they watched from the summit of their four- 
year pinnacle, they predicted great things for Janet, 
three years hence. But Janet and her classmates 
set down the seniors as a stage-struck race of beings, 
laughed at the predictions and straightway forgot 
them. Three years later, though, they laughed at 
their own laughter. 

Day, meanwhile, was rejoicing frankly over the 
change in Janet. Underneath all her apparent uncon- 
cern, she had always been prone to regard the Leslies 
as her own discovery; it had been a source of keen 
regret and keener mortification to her that Janet 
had in no way justified her enthusiastic prophecies. 
Even better than Sidney because she had known her 


260 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


longer and under conditions that were far more a 
test of real character, Day had realized to the full 
Janet’s possibilities, her inherent nobility. It had 
been vexatious, then, when Janet had signally failed 
to show herself for what she really, truly was. Day 
could not blame the girls for not liking Janet; she 
had not blamed Janet for her contrariety; she merely 
had been disgusted and exasperated by the whole 
false situation. She rejoiced the more heartily, then, 
when the situation ended, when Janet cast aside her 
shell and set to work in earnest to become a girl 
with other girls. Day was far-sighted. She rejoiced 
over Janet; but her thanks she gave to Sidney 
Stayre. 

But Sidney, as was her wont, paid scanty heed to 
causes and effects. She merely rejoiced that Janet 
was daily growing more agreeable, met her advances 
fully half-way across, said a good word for her when 
she could, and then let the matter drop. Neverthe- 
less, she too, like Day, encouraged Janet’s frequent 
appearings on their threshold. 

And now Janet looked up from a lapful of books. 

“ Judith Addison? ” she queried. 

“ Yes.” Sidney’s cadence was a falling one. 

“ You sound as if your last friend had already 
taken flight,” Janet commented. 

“ I feel so, or as if I’d like to fly. Judith wants 
to make me a visit.” 

“ Sidney ! ” Day’s hands fell to her side in conster- 
nation. “ What do people think we’re made of? 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


261 


It seems to me we have been visited to death, this 
year.” 

“ Only Rob and Jack,” Sidney reminded her. 
11 Of course, Wade has only just gone home; but not 
even my egotism could make me think he came here 
to see me.” 

“ I don't know why it is,” Day said reflectively; 
“ but I feel as if we'd been in a perfect whirl of visits. 
Rob and Jack don't count; they're us. I know there 
must have been some others.” 

“ Judith isn't so veiy bad,” Janet put in encoura- 
gingly. “ She's pretty, and she can be very 
nice.” 

Sidney made a wry face. 

“ When she isn’t critical. She generally is, though.” 

“ I hate that sort,” Day said reflectively, and quite 
forgetful that it was Sidney’s cousin she was malign- 
ing. “ I don't wonder you dread her, Sidney. There 
is so little of the term left that you really don't want 
her here in the way; and outsiders are dreadfully in 
the way, you know. Can't you put her off? ” 

Sidney shook her head. 

“ Auntie Jack has been too good to me,” she said 
dolefully. 

Janet puckered up her mouth. Then, yielding to 
some hidden thought, she burst out laughing. 

“ Misfortunes never do happen in on one singly,” 
she said whimsically. “ I think I may as well take 
the present hour of mourning to break my own bad 
news.” 


262 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ Janet! What now? ” Sidney spun about and 
faced Janet in obvious dismay. 

“ Don’t pluck out all your hair, Sidney; it is Day’s 
place to do that. Lord Axmuthy is coming back here, 
the twenty-first.” 

“ Oh, Me-hitabel! I foresee my end,” Day groaned. 
“ Can’t Ronald break his leg, or something, Janet? 
I will not be seen by returning alums, walking abroad 
with that chimpanzee.” 

“ Alums!” Sidney interpolated swiftly. “ They 
don’t count, Day; they only think they do. More- 
over, fie upon you for maligning an old-time 
friend! ” 

“ Fie all you like! Much you know about it,” Day 
retorted, completely jarred from her usual careless 
composure by the woe which threatened her. “ You 
just go gadding off with Ronald, and leave me with 
that anthropoidal, addle-pated ape of an Englishman. 
There! I’m ashamed of myself, and my mother 
wouldn’t give me any jam for supper; but I don’t 
care if she wouldn’t. Janet, what is your brother 
thinking of, to bring the creature back? ” 

Nobody was ever known to take Day’s tempers 
seriously. Janet only laughed. 

“ Poor Ronald! He isn’t to blame,” she said. 
“ All spring, he has been keeping Lord Axmuthy 
away from here. Really, his letters have been pitiful. 
Lord Axmuthy has been determined to come back 
again; and Ronald has been like a nurse, dangling 
toys in front of a baby that persists in crying for 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


263 


sweeties. He is absolutely loyal to Lord Axmuthy; 
but I fancy he has his hands full sometimes.” 

Sidney, meanwhile, was once more riding along 
on her own train of thought. 

“ Me, too, with Judith,” she observed suddenly. 
“ Judith is pretty; but — well, ask Wade.” 

“ Wade has ceased to be a judge of things feminine,” 
Day commented irreverently. 

“ Maybe he has; but he judged Judith, some time 
ago. One gets acquainted with a half-sister at an 
early date.” 

“ I should think it might depend somewhat on the 
age of the half-sister,” Day suggested, still irreverently. 

“ It wouldn’t; not with Judith. She was never 
young,” Janet remarked thoughtfully. “ She was 
bom grown-up and finical and critical. I don’t 
believe she ever had her garter break down in all her 
little girlhood ; and that really does stand for a good 
deal, as much as losing off one’s hair-ribbon. I liked 
her at first, that summer in Grande Riviere. Ronald 
liked her, too, she was so soft and dainty; but we 
did get most awfully tired of her. I used to wish she’d 
fall down and bump her nose till it was black and blue. 
How she always did stare at your shoes, Sidney, when 
you came home muddy! ” 

Sidney laughed. 

“ I generally did come home muddy,” she returned. 
“ Moreover, if my memory serves me right, it was 
you who fell head first into the river. However, we 
shall be spick and span enough here, even for Judith.” 


264 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Janet planted her elbows on her knees, as she sat, 
tailor fashion, among the cushions of the window 
seat, and the attitude changed her to the likeness of a 
wise little frog, lifting himself to add his voice to the 
discussion. 

“ I may have grown so good that even Judith 
won’t tempt me,” she observed at length. “ However, 
unless she has radically changed, she will lead me to 
take a plunge into Paradise, shoes and all, and then 
go to chapel without changing, before she has been 
in town for forty-eight hours. When will she come, 
Sidney? ” 

“ So you can be getting ready for the plunge? She 
wants to come, the twentieth.” 

Day sprang to her feet excitedly and cut the college 
girl’s equivalent of a pigeon wing. 

“ Girls! Sidney! Janet! The very thing! I always 
had a business sense; I inherit it from Daddy. It 
was I, myself, who set Janet to work to turn her 
embroidery into college tuition. That was brilliant; 
but it was nothing to the cleverness which has in- 
spired me now.” 

“ Tell it, Day. You’ll feel better then,” Sidney 
advised her compassionately 

“ Better! I’m best now. Listen! Once I heard 
a farmer, haggling over a bargain, say he made one 
hand wash the other. We’ll do it now.” 

“ How? ” 

“ By pooling — isn’t that the market word? — 
our obnoxious guests.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


265 


Janet was the first to catch Day’s idea, but only 
in part. 

“ Beautiful, Day! And let them fight it out to- 
gether? ” 

“ Fight? No, child! Let them amuse each other. 
They were foreordained for chums. Judith, from 
all accounts, would forgive all things for the sake of 
that aw of an accent; and, to my knowledge, Lord 
Axmuthy would prefer beauty to brains.” 

“Day!” Sidney remonstrated. “Have you 
cracked your mirror, dear? ” 

Day laughed, quite unabashed. 

“I? Dear me, no! I was only his guide, philoso- 
pher and friend. I taught him snowshoeing and the 
American way to waltz. But Judith — ” 

“ Yes, Judith — ” Sidney echoed. “ But wait till 
Judith comes.” 

Judith did come, just ten days later, come bag and 
baggage for a ten-day visit. Sidney, with Lord 
Axmuthy’s immediate advent in view, tried her best 
not to repine. Even her first glance at Judith, stand- 
ing there beside the car and waiting until the porter 
handed her her little bag and umbrella, just that 
swift first glance assured Sidney that her Boston 
cousin differed from the Leslie house girls by all the 
nameless shades which separate the debutante from 
her college-bred sister. Judith was smoother, gentler, 
of well-poised bearing, well-guarded speech; yet 
Sidney had a shrewd suspicion that, in resourcefulness 
and self-control, the college girl would more than 


266 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


prove her equal. Then she smiled to herself, as 
she saw the haughty little nod with which Judith 
took the umbrella in her outstretched hand. The 
college girls, as a rule, did not take the trouble to buy 
parlour-car seats for the short run up from Spring- 
field. They rode in the day coaches, and their suit- 
cases they lugged, themselves, setting them down 
now and then to change hands, or to settle a refractory 
lock of hair. Judith, veiled and dainty, looked as if 
she had never known a refractory lock of hair in all 
her life. Sidney drew a long breath, twisted her lips 
into a smile of welcome and went forward with out- 
stretched hand. At least, it was the same old Judith; 
she knew about what to expect. 

Lord Axmuthy, however, when he came, next day, 
surpassed all limits of her expectation. The kindly 
haze of three months’ forgetfulness had wrapped itself 
about his peculiarities, had caused Sidney, and even 
Day, to grow oblivious to his wrinkled and aged face, 
his dangling jaw, his spiky hair, even to his accent 
which defied all orthographic rendering in its strange 
variants of the letter A. Sidney discovered him 
straying aimlessly about the campus, under the im- 
pression that he would find Day there, likewise stray- 
ing; she received with manifest disfavour his sug- 
gestion that he accompany her upon her errand. The 
errand was to Judith; and Sidney tried to picture 
Lord Axmuthy, viewed in Judith’s eyes, tried and 
signally failed in the trial. For four and twenty hours, 
Judith had maintained towards all things an attitude 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


267 


of tolerant criticism: towards the girls’ manners, 
the faculty clothes, the grounds, the buildings, even 
towards the sleepy old town itself. And neither girls 
nor faculty, college nor aristocratic, staid old town 
were accustomed to criticism from snippy young 
debutantes with their noses in the air. They, of 
necessity, were dumb; but Sidney had felt it needful 
to wax voluble in their defence. But, if Judith 
patronized the wellnigh perfect in such royal fashion, 
what would she do to poor Lord Axmuthy? Sidney 
had gooseflesh all up and down her spine, as she pre- 
ceded Lord Axmuthy up the steps to the veranda 
where Judith sat awaiting the arrival of her cousin. 

Judith took her departure on Monday morning, 
ten days later. The afternoon before, Mrs. Leslie 
had stretched her supper invitations to include both 
Judith and Lord Axmuthy, had included them with 
some forebodings as to their combined effect upon the 
other guests. Her misgivings had been wasted, how- 
ever. According to his custom of the past eight days, 
Lord Axmuthy had pinned himself to Judith’s apron 
string, and together they had betaken themselves 
to the extreme corner of the back veranda where they 
consumed tea and sandwiches in a silence which, to 
judge from their rapt expressions, was far more elo- 
quent than many words. Sidney and Ronald dis- 
covered them there, quite by accident, when they went 
to rescue a neighbour’s dog from collision with the 
family cat; but neither Judith nor Lord Axmuthy 
appeared to become aware of the invading presence. 


268 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Two fine white handkerchiefs, bearing a crested G, 
served to keep their persons from all contact with 
the veranda floor; two cups were on their knees, 
Judith’s untasted, Axmuthy ’s stirred by a contem- 
plative hand; but the plate of sandwiches on the 
floor between them showed that their appetites had 
not yet yielded to the sentimental surroundings of 
the place and hour. Nevertheless, Sidney made a sign 
to Ronald, and together they withdrew themselves 
on tiptoe. 

An hour later, Sidney watched them going down 
the street. When they had vanished around the 
little bend, — 

“ Day,” she said fervently; “ you are a genius.” 

Day laughed. 

“ Did you ever have a guest that was so little 
trouble? ” she inquired. “ I’m going to write a 
treatise: Entertaining Made Easy.” 

Sidney tapped thoughtfully upon the sill of the 
open window. 

“ What do you suppose will be Judith’s impression 
of Smith? ” she queried. 

Late that same evening, Lord Axmuthy knocked 
at his secretary’s door. 

“ You have come in, then? ” Ronald said, as he 
offered his guest a chair. 

“ Oh, yes, long ago.” Lord Axmuthy, his hat still 
on the back of his head and his hair in the wild dis- 
order which betokened thought, stood gazing at his 
friend with drooping jaw. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


260 


“ What have you been about? ” Ronald asked idly, 
as he sorted out the pages of a long letter which lay 
on the table before him. 

“ I’ve been — busy.” 

“ Anything I could do? ” 

“ Rather not!” The reply came with emphatic 
haste. “ I’ve — I’ve been sitting in the moonlight, 
you know, and thinking,” Lord Axmuthy announced 
weightily. 

Repressing his mirth as well as he could, Ronald 
shook his head. 

“ That sounds bad, old man,” he said. 

“ Oh, no. Quite the contrary, it was very nice. I 
quite enjoyed it,” Lord Axmuthy assured him gravely. 

There came a pause, a long one. In fact, it was 
so long that Ronald stole a glance and then another 
at Lord Axmuthy’s impassive face, thinking he might 
have inadvertently fallen asleep. Suddenly and with 
unexpected briskness, Lord Axmuthy spoke. 

“ I think I will go to Boston, Wednesday night,” 
he said. “ IVe got an errand there, you know, and 
it may keep me there a bit. You’d best stop on here 
with your mother; she may need you, and I shall 
come back for the play. I think I’d best go Wednes- 
day, after tea and before you get about your dinner. 
Else, you’d hate to see me off.” He rose and started 
for the door; but, on the threshold, he turned back 
again. “ She’s really very pretty, you know,” he 
announced. 

Then he departed, presumably to rosy dreams. 


270 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


CHAPTER TWENTY -ONE 

L ORD AXMUTHY was wellnigh beside himself 
with enthusiasm. 

“ By George, they’re trundling hoops, you know! ” 
he burst forth shrilly, as the advance guard of the 
line bore down upon him. 

Over the campus, the June day was dying from 
sunset into afterglow, from afterglow to dusk, and 
then towards starlight. The great brick houses 
loomed large in the softening twilight; overhead, 
the aged elms drooped heavily, laden with their 
fullest leafage, now saturate with dew. From the 
corner of the Tyler House, past the Students’ Building, 
past the little hollow which lies beyond, the back 
campus was thronged with girls bareheaded and in 
their pale summer frocks, with faculty, and with 
the sprinkling of townspeople who can be counted 
upon to put in an appearance at any and every open 
function of the college. 

Gathered into little knots, they talked and laughed 
together, nodding greetings to returning alumnae 
of sufficiently recent date for purposes of recognition, 
racing across the intervening stretch of grass to fall 
into the arms of last year’s girls, feigning an absorbing 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


271 


interest in their immediate surroundings, yet ever and 
anon casting furtive glances over their shoulders to 
the point where the long, straight walk leading up 
from the Students’ Building lost itself among the 
other walks leading from other buildings farther up 
the campus. 

At the crest of the little ridge midway between 
the Students’ Building and the hollow to the north 
of it, just at a point whence could be obtained the 
best view both of the hollow and of the steps of the 
building, stood a group of six: Day and Ronald, 
Sidney and Lord Axmuthy, Janet and Jack Blan- 
chard who had come up, that afternoon, to remain 
till Day’s exit, two days later. 

“ All here but Rob,” Sidney had said contentedly, 
that night, as they started for the campus. 

“ And he gets here at noon, to-morrow,” Day 
added, as she fell into line, with Ronald at her side. 
“ Shame that horrid examination kept him from 
getting here, to-day ! To-morrow, at this time, we’ll 
all be here together.” 

“ Yes, you know; only — ” Lord Axmuthy offered 
fragmentary remonstrance. 

“ Only what? ” Sidney asked, while she endeav- 
oured to keep his lagging steps up to the pace set by 
those in the rear. 

In vain, however, for, — 

“ By Jove! Ou-uw! ” Lord Axmuthy remonstrated 
once more, and, this time, his remonstrance poncerned 
itself with things physical. “ I say, Mr. — Mr. 


272 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Blanchard, will you be good enough to keep off my 
heels, you know? ” 

Jack expressed a proper degree of contrition and 
smothered his own amusement as best he might. 
He had been continually smothering it since, an hour 
before, he had discovered that Lord Axmuthy ’s sense 
of decorum had been affronted by the need of greeting 
as acquaintance the man whom heretofore he had 
considered a candidate for fees. Once upon a time, 
when he had been conductor of a Pullman sleeper, 
Jack Blanchard had had the mirthful honour of 
presiding over Lord Axmuthy ’s journeyings. There 
had even been a difference of opinion, a quiet main- 
tenance of Jack’s authority. To five of the group, the 
matter, buried in the past, was of no especial account; 
and among the five was Jack. He was far too sensible 
to be ashamed of any honourable task honourably 
fulfilled. Lord Axmuthy, however, was the sixth, 
and to him the matter was of vast account. To his 
mind, Jack was still the uniformed conductor, off for 
a day’s outing, to be sure, and hence divested of his 
uniform, but still the uniformed conductor who was in 
league with the porter to extract his meed of quarters. 
No one had thought it needful to explain Jack’s 
identity to Lord Axmuthy; but Lord Axmuthy ’s 
memory for a face was uncomfortably alert. His 
recognition of Jack had been as instantaneous as was 
the stiffening of his whole manner. Moreover, he 
was too absorbed in maintaining the distance de- 
manded by his British dignity to heed the fact that 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


273 


Day and Sidney were overwhelmed with mirth at his 
attempts to snub this inflated hireling whom they were 
pleased to accept as their own equal. 

Now he saw fit, by reason of his dignity, to disdain 
Jack’s proffered apology. 

“ Fellow always was arbitrary, you know,” he 
muttered. Then, for Sidney’s ear, he added, “ How 
jolly American you are, Miss Stayre!” 

“ Why not? ” she asked, so flatly that Lord Ax- 
muthy edged a bit nearer the outer edge of the pave- 
ment. 

“ No reason,” he responded hurriedly. “ It’s, very 
nice, of course.” 

“ Of course.” Sidney, even in her emphatic assent, 
began to wonder what bee was buzzing in his Lord- 
ship’s bonnet. 

“Yes, by George; that’s what I say! We don’t 
do it, over in England. That’s what makes it so 
interesting, you know,” Lord Axmuthy explained 
volubly. 

“ What does? ” Sidney felt her brain reeling, with 
its effort to comprehend the utterances of her com- 
panion. 

“ This.” Lord Axmuthy pointed his right fore- 
finger back over his left shoulder. “ The taking a 
porter chap to be your friend, you know.” 

There was a pause. Then, — 

“ Lord Axmuthy — ” Sidney began. 

But Day interposed. She had heard what went 
before; on one or two occasions she had also heard 


274 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


that metallic ring in Sidney’s voice, and she had no 
wish that, on such a festal night as this, even Lord 
Axmuthy should be flayed. 

“ Jack, you are a blessed old thing,” she said; 
“ and I never was gladder to see anybody in all my 
life; but your train has made us very late. What 
if you and Lord Axmuthy and I rush on ahead to 
get good places, and let the others stop at the Music 
Building for Janet’s score? ” And, turning in beside 
the gray stone church, she led the way by all the 
short cuts possible, accompanied upon either hand 
by an escort, the one filled with mingled disgust 
and wrath and mirth, coupled with loyal gratitude 
to the two girls who stood his friends, the other 
vaguely aware that he had recently been smitten 
between an earthquake and a tornado for whose 
sudden emerging into existence he was totally at 
a loss to account. 

By the time the Leslies and Sidney had rejoined 
them, however, Lord Axmuthy had so far re- 
covered from his momentary pettishness that he 
greeted Sidney with a forgiving nod, and, an 
instant later, once more slid into his old place at her 
side. 

“ I say, you know,” he observed confidentially at 
length, when this manoeuvre had been accomplished 
to his satisfaction; “ I really wish you wouldn’t row 
me now.” 

For the life of her, Sidney could not keep a ring 
of haughtiness out of her tone, as she made answer, — 



“ DOWN THE PATH THEY CAME CHARGING ALONG.” 

\Page 275. 










SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


275 


“ Lord Axmuthy, I shall always row the people 
who are rude to my best friends.” 

“ But not now? ” he urged. 

“ Why not now, as much as ever? ” 

“ Because — why, by George, because we’re going 
to be cousins, don’t you know. A chap never rows 
his cousins.” 

“ Cousins!” Sidney echoed blankly. 

Lord Axmuthy faced her, his countenance slit 
wellnigh from ear to ear by his proud and expansive 
smile. 

“ Yes, cousins,” he iterated firmly. “ She’s your 
cousin, you know, and so I’ll get to be your cousin, 
too, in a year or so. We’re very young, and your 
aunt wants to find out about me, and that; but, in 
time, after a year or so, it’s going to be quite ripping.” 
He pulled himself up short, as if fearful lest his 
enthusiasm had carried him too far, and added 
guardedly, “ She quite fancied me, you know; she 
did it at the very first.” 

A little cheer from the waiting throng about her 
saved Sidney from the necessity of speaking. Still 
biting her lower lip to steady it, she turned and looked 
up across the campus, now lying dusky in the fallen 
twilight. 

Down the path they came charging along, out from 
among the buildings at the upper end of the campus, 
straight towards the Students’ Building steps, a 
long, gay irregular row of fluttering gowns and flying 
feet and loosening brown hair: the procession of the 


276 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


senior class, holding their final revel of the senior 
vacation week which precedes the actual business 
of being graduated. On they came, a merry mob of 
girls, comely, eager; and every girl drove before her 
in the mad race a hoop, and the race was set to end 
at the wide flight of steps before them. 

Lord Axmuthy, beholding, gave vent to a shrill 
crow of rapture; but, by this time, Lord Axmuthy 
had become a sight far too familiar to be able to draw 
more than a passing glance upon any but his worst 
vagaries. A few visiting parents raised their brows, 
a few returning alumnae asked a question; then the 
attention flew back again to the gay line of girls, 
fast piling themselves, hoops and all, upon the wide, 
low flight of steps of the building which was their 
very own. 

There came a flutter of settling skirts, a clashing of 
hoops, passed up from hand to hand to go clattering 
down on the paved floor above. Then the girls 
began to sing, and the singing was not wholly mirth- 
ful, in spite of the gay words. They sang to their 
class, to all the classes, to the faculty as a whole and 
with respect, to the faculty individually and with 
much friendly chaff. They sang to every known 
species of goddess that a college can afford: intel- 
lectual, social, musical, and simply all-round good 
fellow. In fact, it was to this last that they sang the 
loudest. And then, as ever, they sang Fair Smith; 
and the chorus, albeit sweeter, was far less strong, 
as voice after voice fell silent. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


277 


Then, with a change of mood swift as any whirl- 
wind, they sprang to their feet and, steps and senti- 
ment left behind them, went racing away again, 
this time to the little hollow where they clasped their 
hands to form a huge ring, ringed about with other 
rings made of the three descending classes. And 
Sidney and Day and Janet, in the outside ring, 
forgot their guests left standing on the top of the 
slope, while they lifted themselves on tiptoe to see 
what might be happening inside the central circle. 

Later on, Jack and Janet walked away together. 

“ It is too dark to see any more of the stunts,” 
Janet had said regretfully. “ Do you care to stay 
longer, Mr. Blanchard? ” 

Jack faced about to meet her question. 

“ If I waited for my interest to die, I should never 
tear myself away,” he said, laughing at his own 
enthusiasm, even while he spoke. “ This place 
fascinates me completely. As I can’t well be stu- 
dent, I think I shall try for a professorship.” 

As he spoke, he turned and, following Janet’s lead, 
he worked his way out of the heart of the crowd, 
circled around the little hollow, and came down again 
into the low ground about the plant house where 
the fragrant shrubberies lay heavy 7, with the dew. 

“ It’s a good little place,” he added then, as he gave 
a backward glance at the darkening hollow, now a 
mere confused blur of light gowns and moving 
figures. “ No wonder Day adores it. Canada can’t 
show anything to equal this.” 


278 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


“ McGill? Toronto? ” Janet questioned loyally. 

Jack shook his head. 

“ Not to be mentioned in the same breath,” he 
assured her, laughing. “ I’ve seen them both. They 
are as much like Smith as a black-and-tan terrier 
is like a thoroughbred collie with his frills on. One 
may know just as much as the other, though I 
doubt it; but, anyway, he hasn’t half the charm in 
his manner of showing it off.” 

Janet faced him gravely. 

“ Mr. Blanchard, are you getting Americanized? ” 

In spite of himself, he laughed at the solemn rebuke. 

“ Not one bit, Miss Leslie. I’m as much a Canadian 
as ever, as proud of being one. That doesn’t blind 
me, though, to the fact that some things are better 
in the States. Why shouldn’t they be? And really,” 
even in the starlight, she could see that his brown 
eyes were quizzical as they looked down into her 
own; “ really, you must have felt the same way, 
yourself ; else, you never would have come down here 
in the first place.” 

When Janet spoke again, her mind had leaped all 
manner of connecting links of conversation. 

“ Did you know I’m going to be in the orchestra 
for dramatics? ” she asked. 

“ No. Really? ” 

“ Yes. You can’t think how I have loved the 
rehearsals. The music is charming. One of the 
seniors did it; but it is really good, like profes- 
sional things. We’ve been rehearsing, all this week. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


279 


This afternoon, we went through the last dress re- 
hearsal.” 

“ How was it, the play, I mean? ” 

Janet shut her hand on the folds of her skirt. 

“ Wait till you see it,” she advised him, and there 
was a slight catch in her voice. 

“ All girls? ” 

She lifted her chin in the old way, and spoke with 
spirit. 

“ Wait,” she bade him for the second time. 
“ You’ll change your accent, when you see it. Ama- 
teur acting has always bored me. This time, though, 
I went to crow, and I remained to — ” 

“ Play the banjo? ” he asked in swift flippancy. 

“ Never! Shakespeare didn’t run to anything 
so skittish as a banjo. I merely bang on the drums 
now and then. It is interesting, and not too bad 
training, even if it’s not the highest form of art. 
Anyway, I was immensely proud of myself, when 
they came to ask me.” 

“ No wonder,” Jack said heartily, for he was find- 
ing Janet very winning, in this new, rare mood of 
confidence. 

“ You see, it was a great feather in my cap,” she 
assured him, with grave frankness. “ I haven’t been 
in things much, till just lately. I enjoy it, too. It 
sounds a queer thing to say; but I truly think I have 
worked a good deal better, since I’ve been a bit more 
frivolous. It’s contrary to reason; but it seems to be 
the fact. Did you know I’ve made the banjo club? ” 


280 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Turning a little, Jack held out his hand. 

“ Congratulations, Miss Leslie! I am proud of my 
countrywoman.” 

“ Wait,” she bade him yet once again; “ till you 
see what work I do in it, next year. And, besides, 
it wasn’t all my doing. Rob was the one to give me 
my start.” 

“ Rob? Yes. But not the one to keep you going,” 
he reminded her. 

“ No,” she assented slowly. “ That was Day.” 

Across the heavy, fragrant night air around them 
came a gay burst of laughter, a quick patter of ap- 
plause. Then, when the silence dropped once more, 
Jack spoke, spoke with a grave, gentle reverence in 
his voice, which Janet had not heard till then. 

“ It generally is Day who does those things,” he 
said. “ I’ve found that out, myself.” 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


281 


CHAPTER TWENTY -TWO 
T first glance, the theatre seemed filled with 



white: soft, fluffy white things, lace and silk 
and muslin, ostrich and marabout, covering the 
floor, the balconies, the boxes. Even the aisles were 
dominated by white-gowned, white-wanded ushers. 
Then, little by little as the eye became accustomed 
to the scene, it picked out here and there a stray 
black coat, worn by some prematurely arrived guest: 
brother, father, or even some more vague relation. 
Four such black coats sat together in the front of the 
first balcony, flanked on either hand by Day and 
Sidney. Now and then, they smiled down upon 
Irene, ushering in the middle aisle below; now and 
then, they smiled across at Janet, pounding away 
for dear life in the right-hand corner of the orchestra. 
For the most part, however, their eyes were turned 
upon the stage, richly set for Shakespeare and 
peopled with a cast which held the great audience 
intent, only to be dominated in their turn by 
the single melancholy figure of their foremost 


actor. 


It was undergraduate night at senior dramatics. 
Rob had arrived, that very noon, happy and 
hilarious as an incipient sophomore could be; yet 


282 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


even his hilarity was for the moment stilled before that 
single black-clothed figure who was rousing the fresh- 
men into frenzy and sending seasoned play-goers 
away to question whether, after all, the last Shake- 
spearean word had yet been said. And then, — 

“ The rest is silence .” 

The house was emptied; the lights were out; the 
play was done. But not, perhaps, in all its conse- 
quences. Those, perchance, might fill another 
volume. Janet’s whole attention, that night, had 
not been fixed upon her drums, nor yet upon the 
front of the first balcony where Ronald, huge and 
handsome in his evening clothes, sat between Lord 
Axmuthy and Sidney Stayre. Even to Janet’s loyal 
'mind, Ronald, that night, was but of secondary 
interest. Jack Blanchard, meanwhile, found himself 
forgetting the stage, forgetting even Day beside him, 
as he sat watching Janet in her corner. Older by 
several years than the rest of the group, by chance 
and temperament and training made accustomed to 
study humanity in its every mood and phase, he was 
finding his great interest now in the face of the girl 
before him, who, totally oblivious of her prominent 
position in the house, was allowing her every thought 
to show itself in her expressive, eager face, in her 
keen brown eyes, fixed so intently on the actors. 
Jack watched, and wondered, and even worried a 
little. Seen with his graver and maturer eyes, Janet 
was only a child; and no child, he told himself, 
should feel things so intensely. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


283 


“ Yes,” she had said to him, that very afternoon. 
“ I am glad I came; I think I love the place better 
than some of the other girls who say a great deal 
more about it.” 

And Jack, watching her intently, gave his mental 
assent to her words. 

Sidney and Day had preempted the side veranda of 
the Leslie house, that afternoon, and were serving 
tea for the three Leslies, Irene, Jack, Rob and his 
British Lordship. The other girls in the house, for the 
most part, were busy with their packing, in obedience 
to the tradition that freshmen are in the way at com- 
mencement time. Even Day was to depart on the 
morrow, taking Jack and Rob off with her. Janet 
remained, by reason of her mother and her own 
place in the dramatics orchestra, while Sidney, 
bidden by Mrs. Leslie, also waited until Irene, her 
usher’s duty finished, could go home with her to 
make a long-promised visit for which the need had 
all at once become insistent. 

The afternoon was hot and stuffy. It was pleasant 
to lounge there in the shady veranda, listening to 
Rob’s nonsense, watching Day’s deft hands as they 
made the tea; doubly pleasant, since their own 
comfort was enhanced by the contrasting sounds 
which came down from the open windows above: 
bumpings, and patterings of hurrying feet, and de- 
mands for news regarding the whereabouts of this 
missing article and that. 

Above his third cup of tea, Lord Axmuthy who, all 


284 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


the afternoon, had been unduly pensive, gave tongue 
to the emotions welling up within him. 

“ I say, you know, it’s lonely here,” he remarked 
sadly, the while he disdainfully prodded with his 
spoon the bit of lemon Day had dropped into his 
cup. 

“ Thank you.” Rob’s accent was cheerily ascend- 
ant. 

Forgetting his lemon, Lord Axmuthy turned him- 
self stiffly about, slowly and as if all of one piece, 
and gazed upon Rob with a fixed stare which might 
have looked a basilisk out of countenance. 

“ What for, old man? ” he queried. 

“ For being lonely in our midst,” Rob told him. 

“ Oh, don’t mention it. I should be quite as lonely, 
you know, if you were not here,” Lord Axmuthy 
reassured him calmly. 

“ Very likely. Is it a trick you have? ” 

“ Yes.” Lord Axmuthy gave a strident sort of 
sigh. “ I’m so quite often, when I’m not in 
Boston.” 

Then it was that, in spite of his years and conse- 
quent decorum, Jack strangled till he spilled his 
tea. With gently sagging jaw, Lord Axmuthy 
watched the operation. Then he turned to Sidney, 
whom, since his avowal of the night before, he had 
chosen as his chiefest confidante. 

“ Fellow seems rather rude, you know,” he made 
comment, as casually as if Jack had been centuries 
and miles distant from their group. “ I suppose he’s 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


285 


not used to this sort of thing, and gets to feeling 
fussed.” 

For an instant, Rob threatened to share Jack’s 
condign fate. Then manfully he rallied and threw 
himself into the conversational breach. 

“ Has it ever occurred to this syndicate of friend- 
ship,” he remarked, with every appearance of exceed- 
ing thoughtfulness; “ that, whereas we have been 
chums for two or three years, this is the first time 
we ever have met? ” 

“ Rob! What nonsense!” Day protested, more 
for the sake of keeping the talk going, than for any- 
thing else. 

“ Not nonsense at all,” Rob persisted. “ This 
present hour is really the very first one we all have 
spent together.” 

Lord Axmuthy turned himself about in his chair and 
eyed him with manifest and absorbing interest. 
Then, — 

“ Oh, that,” he commented laconically at last. 

And Rob gave up completely, and joggled his tea 
all over Mrs. Leslie’s white linen skirt. 

Next noon, the Argyles and Jack Blanchard went 
away. The others, even including Mrs. Leslie, went 
down to see them off. In the bedlam of banging 
trunks and frenzied baggage masters and chattering, 
remonstrating girls, however, conversation was prac- 
tically out of the question, save in the most frag- 
mentary scraps. Rob breathed a sigh of absolute 
relief, as the train moved out of the station amid a 


286 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


clamour of good-byes. He lingered on the platform, 
smiling and hat in hand, until the train rounded the 
little curve. Then, smiling still more broadly, he 
went back to the seat where he had left Day, barri- 
caded past all possibility of intrusion on the part 
of the girls who filled the train, and guarded by Jack 
who had received his private instructions to drive 
the girls away at any cost. 

“ Be thanked!” he said devoutly, as he dropped 
down at Day’s side and straightened out his legs. 
“ At last, we’ve got you to ourselves, Aurora.” 

“ Hush! ” she bade him hastily. 

“ Oh, it’s out,” he reassured her placidly. “ I saw 
it in the catalogue you sent me.” 

“ I don’t mean the name,” Day protested, for her 
inherited Aurora was still her tender point. “ I only 
don’t want the girls to hear you.” 

“ Why not? ” Rob took off his hat and ruffled up his 
yellow hair, in token of the completeness of his comfort. 

“ They might not understand. They might think 
you meant them, you know.” 

“ So I did,” Rob answered impenitently. “ I 
meant just them. In fact, I am surfeited with girls 
at present.” 

She rolled her eyes up at him in rebuke. 

“ I’m a girl,” she reminded him. 

“ No,” Rob objected suddenly. “ You aren’t a 
girl; you’re just my sister.” 

With an odd little gesture of satisfaction, she nestled 
back into her seat. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


287 


“ How nice of you! " she said. “ I love the girls; 
they have been good to me, and I have had a happy 
year. And yet — ” 

“ And yet you're glad as thunder to get rid of 
them for a little while, and go back home to play 
with your own brother," Rob asserted masterfully. 

Day edged a little closer to his side and shut her 
hand upon his sleeve. Then she lifted her eyes to 
Jack. 

“ Two brothers," she corrected gently. “ Yes, Rob, 
I am." 

The train out of sight, Lord Axmuthy and the Les- 
lies drove away together, leaving Sidney and Irene 
to stroll homeward at their own pace. 

“ I really feel depressed," Sidney said thoughtfully, 
as they left the station behind them and came around 
the corner into the main street. “ Day's going is 
like the falling of the first leaf; it makes me realize 
that the end is near." 

“ Are you sorry? " Irene asked her. 

“ Very," Sidney responded promptly. “ I love 
home and the home things, love them just as much 
as I did, a year ago. But, up here at Smith, I’ve 
had an absolutely happy year. I couldn’t well help 
it, with Day in the same room." 

“ You’ll have her, next year," Irene reminded her. 

“ Yes. And yet, other things won’t be the same. 
We’ll be sophomores then, and bound to take our- 
selves more seriously, just to show the freshmen how. 
Freshmen are such a bore." 


288 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


Irene’s laugh sent Sidney’s pensive mood flying 
to the winds. 

“ You’re nothing but a freshman, yourself,” she 
said. 

“ Yes; but so much depends on the point of view,” 
Sidney answered gayly. “ I am looking on now from 
the perspective of next week.” 

“ How do you like it? ” Irene queried. 

“ Don’t,” Sidney replied, with flat brevity. “ We 
neither of us will have half so good a time, next year. 
Sophomores are bumptious, and seniors are always 
on the verge of tears, at least, in summer term. 
You won’t look at all pretty, when your nose gets 
pink, Irene.” 

Then they walked on in silence, until the bend 
was behind them. Before them among its circling 
elms, the college tower rose sharply, and from its 
top the bell came clanging down the hour, an hour 
just like so many other hours, yet, to Sidney’s mind, 
weighted with new meanings, weighted, too, with its 
own hint of sadness. It was as if the sound were the 
knell of her own student irresponsibility. 

“ It has been a good year,” she said again. “ I’ve 
loved it; I think I have had the very best of every 
hour. But, Irene, there are only three more years left.” 

“ And then? ” 

Sidney’s tone rang tragic. 

“ And then the jumping-off place of my life.” 

The next moment, she felt Irene’s fingers meet her 
own, in one of their rare caresses. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 


289 


“ I know, dear child, ” she said and, as she spoke, 
some secret thought sent the blood rushing to her 
cheeks; “ but then, it may be only the jumping into 
something else.” 

Five days later, a small figure, capped with vivid 
scarlet and clothed in white linen already a bit 
smudgy about the knees, was clinging, monkey-wise, 
to the closed gates which barred the crowd from the 
in-coming train at the Grand Central Station. To 
his small brain, the waiting time had been unending; 
but at length his patience was rewarded. 

“ S. S .,” he shrieked in rapture, while he waved 
one grimy hand in salutation. “ That’s her suitcase; 
I see the corner. There she is, Wade! Look! Sidney! 
Sidney! I’m here! See me! And I’ve maked a 
poem for Irene to sing to you, next year, so you’ll 
both berember me. Listen.” His voice lifted itself 
until the iron girders rang in their lofty places. 
“ Listen, Sidney and Irene! 

“ There was a bear, 

Without a hair, 

Who climbed a tree 
And he did see 

A bee.” 

Sidney’s hand was already waving a welcome ; but 
Irene had no eyes for Bungay. Her smile was all for 
the tall man who stood waiting at Bungay’s side. 


THE END. 




















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. 


































• • 



















ANNA CHAPIN RAY’S 

“SIDNEY” STORIES 


Having completed the “ Teddy ” books, which delighted and continue to entertain 
thousands of readers, Miss Ray in her new “ Sidney ” books utilizes new scenes and 
an entirely new set of characters. 

Anna Chapin Ray is to the present generation of youthful readers what Louisa M. 
Alcott was to her generation. Her stories may be commended for their straight- 
forward, simple style, their clean atmosphere, and their uplifting influence on the 
characters of all who peruse them. — Boston Transcript. 


SIDNEY: HER SUMMER ON THE 
ST. LAWRENCE 

Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. i2mo. $1.50. 

Sidney Stayre is another of this author’s true, helpful, earnest girl characters.— 
Denver Republican. 

JANET : HER WINTER IN QUEBEC 

Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. i2mo. $1.50. 

Gives a delightful picture of Canadian life and introduces a group of young people 
who are bright and wholesome and good to read about . — New York Globe. 


DAY: HER YEAR IN NEW YORK 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. i2mo. $1.50. 

The third volume of the “Sidney Books,” in which Phyllis, Sidney’s younger 
sister, develops from a well-meaning blunderer into an affectionate, tactful character. 
— The Bookman , New York. 


SIDNEY AT COLLEGE 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. i2mo. $1.50. 

In this new volume Sidney Stayre is shown as a freshman at Smith College, en- 
joying to the full the pleasures that fill her days, having her individual difficulties, 
and with all the freshman’s adoration for upper class girls and happenings. 


LITTLE, BROWN, fc? COMPANY, Publishers 

254 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 


ANNA CHAPIN RAY’S 

“TEDDY” STORIES 

Miss Ray’s work draws instant comparison with the best of Miss Alcott’s : first, 
because she has the same genuine sympathy with boy and girl life ; secondly, 
because she creates real characters, individual and natural, like the young people 
one knows, actually working out the same kind of problems ; and, finally, because 
her style of writing is equally unaffected and straightforward. — Christian Register , 
Boston. 


TEDDY : HER BOOK. A Story of Sweet Sixteen 

Illustrated by Vesper L. George. i2mo. $1.50. 

This bewitching story of “Sweet Sixteen,” with its earnestness, impetuosity, 
merry pranks, and unconscious love for her hero, has the same spring-like charm. — 
Kate Sanborn. 

PHEBE: HER PROFESSION. A Sequel to "Teddy: 

Her Book” 

Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. i2mo. $1.50. 

This is one of the few books written for young people in which there is to be 
found the same vigor and grace that one demands in a good story for older people. 
— Worcester Spy. 

TEDDY: HER DAUGHTER 

A Sequel to ‘‘Teddy: Her Book,” and ‘‘Phebe: Her Profession” 
Illustrated by J. B. Graff. i2mo. $1.50. 

It is a human story, all the characters breathing life and activity. — Buffalo Times. 

NATHALIE’S CHUM 

Illustrated by Ellen Bernard Thompson. i2mo. $1.50. 

Nathalie is the sort of a young girl whom other girls like to read about. — Hartford 
Courant. 

URSULA’S FRESHMAN. A Sequel to ‘‘Nathalie’s Chum” 

Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards. i2mo. $1.50. 

The best of a series already the best of its kind. — - Boston Herald. 

NATHALIE’S SISTER. A *° “ Ursu,a ’ s Fresh- 

Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. i2mo. $1.50. 

P e SS y> the heroine, is a most original little lady who says and does all Sorts of 
interesting things. She has pluck and spirit, and a temper, but she is very lovable, 
and girls will find her delightful to read about.— Louisville Evening Post. 


LITTLE, BROWN, £«? COMPANY, Publishers 

154 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 


'i. 

HELEN LEAH REED’S 

“BRENDA” BOOKS 


The author is one of the best equipped of our writers for girls of larger growth. 
Her stories are strong, intelligent, and wholesome. — The Outlook , New York. 
Miss Reed’s girls have all the impulses and likes of real girls as their characters 
are developing, and her record of their thoughts and actions reads like a chapter 
snatched from the page of life. — Boston Herald . 


BRENDA, HER SCHOOL AND HER CLUB 

Illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith. i2mo. $1.50. 

One of the most natural books for girls. It is a careful study of schoolgirl life in 
a large city, somewhat unique in its way. — Minneapolis Journal . 

BRENDA’S SUMMER AT ROCKLEY 

Illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith. i2mo. $1.50. 

It is a wholesome book, telling of a merry and healthy vacation. — Dial , Chicago. 

BRENDA’S COUSIN AT RADCLIFFE 

Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. i2mo. $1.50. 

No better college story has been written. — Providence News. 

BRENDA’S BARGAIN 

Illustrated by Ellen Bernard Thompson. i2mo. $1.50. 

The story deals with social settlement work, under conditions with which the 
author is familiar. — The Bookman , New York. 

AMY IN ACADIA 

Illustrated by Katherine Pyle. i2mo. $1.50. 

A splendid tale for girls, carefully written, interesting and full of information con- 
cerning the romantic region made famous by the vicissitudes of Evangeline.— 
Toronto Globe. 

BRENDA’S WARD 

Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. i2mo. $1.50. 

The story details the experience of a Chicago girl at school in Boston, and very 
absorbing those experiences are — full of action and diversity. — Chicago Post. 


LITTLE, BROWN, fc? COMPANY, Publishers 

25+ WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 


New Illustrated Edition of 
The Spinning-Wheel Series 


THE SPINNING-WHEEL SERIES 

By Louisa M. Alcott. New Illustrated Edition. Uniform in 
size with the Illustrated Edition of The Little Women Series, 
printed from entirely new plates, with new and attractive cover 
design. 4vols. i2mo. Decorated cloth, in box, $6.00. Separately, 
$1.50. 

1. SPINNING-WHEEL STORIES 

With 8 full-page pictures and vignette on titlepage by Wm. A. 
McCullough. $1.50. 

2. SILVER PITCHERS 

With 8 full-page pictures and vignette on titlepage by J. W. F. Kennedy. 
$1.50. 

3. PROVERB STORIES 

With 8 full-page pictures and vignette on titlepage by Ethel Pennewill 
Brown. $1.50. 

4. A GARLAND FOR GIRLS 

With 12 full-page pictures and vignette on titlepage by Clara E. 
Atwood and other artists. $1.50. 

F OUR volumes of healthy and hearty stories so told as to 
fascinate the young people, while inculcating sturdy courage 
and kindness to the weak in the boys, and in the girls those virtues 
which fit them for filling a woman’s place in the home. The several 
artists have caught the spirit of the author and have provided capital 
illustrations for these new editions. 

It is not rash to say that Miss Alcott’ s stories were never more 
appealing to young readers than at the present moment. In spite 
of a profusion of juvenile fiction, they have steadily held their own ; 
and they persistently refuse, through their inherent merits, to be 
elbowed aside by pretentious modern stories of unnatural and unreal 
childhood life. The very genuineness of character and incident, 
the homely appeal to all that is best in young womanhood and 
young manhood, have made “Little Men,” “Little Women,” 
and their successors classics in their kind. — Boston Transcript. 


LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY 

Publishers, 154 W A^j[li|G 3 jpN STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 

720 "* 

























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